Judith Gill Archives

Changing from single sex to co-ed can be good if based on educational (not economic) reasons

Single sex versus co-ed schooling is back in the news with the announcement from The Armidale School, a traditional, private, all boy school, that it is turning co-ed. Of course there are many opinions about it, you probably have your own. So, as someone who has written extensively on the issue, here is mine.

I’m dismayed when, as in the case of The Armidale School, the announcement to adopt coeducation is put forward on economic grounds, in the media at least, rather than being driven by educational ones.

I think the case has to be made strongly for educational reasons, and understood by all concerned, before the development from single sex to co-ed should proceed.

There are excellent educational reasons for choosing coeducational schools for your children in 21st century Australia, such as their capacity to offer a wide range of subjects in senior school, the classrooms tend to display greater diversity of outlook and opinions, friendship groups are less stratified and more fluid and students move relatively easily into mixed contexts such as university, work and social life generally.

However fifty years ago in Australia the situation was very different. In coeducational schools up until the late 20th century girls had significantly less access to education compared to boys. Before 1975 girls were much less likely than boys to complete school and to progress to university where they were vastly outnumbered by male students. All too often girls were channelled into domestic science and clerical courses rather than mainstream academic ones because the latter were thought to be too difficult for them. Consequently we are indebted to the tradition of girls only schools for establishing that girls can and do achieve highly in curriculum areas once reserved for males.

But now that education is widely viewed as the right of all young Australians much of the earlier gender discrimination has diminished, if not entirely disappeared. Education in mixed settings has been seen to prosper to the benefit of all concerned, teachers, parents, administrators and most particularly students.

I’ve been involved with several schools in the decision to become coeducational and in each case it has been a time of productive professional development for the school community. Teachers, in particular, have been ready to respond to new challenges and to rethink the tried and true pedagogical styles in terms of broader applications.

However one school, a previous single sex school, after about 3 months of coeducation sent out a newsletter to their school community with the headlines “It’s just the same … and we are all doing very well!” I must admit to considerable disappointment at this, given I had anticipated they would be relishing the change in their student body and enjoying different sorts of learning processes. I guess they were trying to be reassuring lest there were parents who were frightened and opposed any element of difference.

I must say although I am generally in favour of coeducation, I am not anti single sex schools. There are some very good single sex schools and also some very ordinary ones, just as there are good and bad coeducational schools. My position is that gender context is not the most important feature of schooling in terms of successful student achievement and positive attitudes to education. It just happens to be the feature most readily remarked on, and thus becomes a stalking horse for all sorts of other issues that are more likely to make a difference to student learning.

Schools with excellent teachers, concerned and involved parent community, inspired leadership and a good spread of relevant resources are to be found in both single sex and coeducational institutions. These features are much more important than the issue of gender context.

I think speculating on whether single sex schools have a future or not in the 21st century is rather pointless. Personally I don’t like or dislike them. However I do object when school leaders make the claim that girls in particular can only learn effectively in single sex schools. There is so much research showing this is not true, that girls are achieving at the top levels in coeducation schools.

So the often reported claim from all girl schools that “research shows ..” is a falsification of properly assembled evidence and/or deliberate mystification. Education is too important for such spurious claims.

You can read more about my research and views in my book “Beyond the Great Divide: Single Sex Schools or Coeducation?” UNSW Press available through Amazon and other local outlets

Judith Gill PhD is currently an Adjunct A/Professor in the School of Education at the University of South Australia where she worked for 25 years in teacher education. She has a longstanding interest in gender, work and education, particularly in terms of gender contexts of learning, which has involved investigating the experience of students in single sex school compared with coeducation, leading to the book Beyond the Great Divide: Single sex schooling or coeducation? (Sydney, UNSW Press 2004). Another line of enquiry is citizenship education as in the 2009 book Knowing Our Place: Children talking about identity, power and citizenship. (Routledge NY). More recently she has investigated engineering education, as seen in Gender Inclusive Engineering Education (NY Routledge 2009) and Challenging Knowledge, Sex and Power: Gender, work and engineering (NY Routledge 2014)

Teacher selection and education set to be worst hit by Pyne’s uni fee deregulation

I believe it is of great importance that we preserve the public charter of our tertiary sector and that it is sufficiently supported by public funding. Current proposals to deregulate university fees would reduce federal commitment to supporting universities financially and thereby diminish universities as public institutions.

Most importantly, if fees are deregulated, there are major issues of concern for the education faculties within our universities. These are the faculties that train our nation’s teachers. I want to air these issues and would love to see some public debate around them.

Education is an essential public work, clearly designed to benefit community and nation rather than just directed towards the increased prosperity and status of individual graduates.

The federal propaganda describing its rationale for fee increases misrepresents the case of individual benefit from university degrees. Supposedly students should pay higher fees because they are the ones who benefit.

So it is important to set the record straight about the personal, and in particular the financial, benefits of getting a degree, especially a degree in education. Some decades ago when University was the privilege of less than 5% of the population it was true that graduates were able to attract greater incomes than non-graduates. However this was hardly ever true for education degrees.

In current times the situation of graduates receiving higher incomes is even less clear. With a significantly larger proportion of young people attending, university income differentials are more closely related to what you studied, where you studied and when you graduated.

Education graduates, the majority of whom find jobs as schoolteachers, are rarely among the high earners.

We already have evidence to support the claim that students are not coming to careers in education for the financial rewards. These students are not recognized in the current politicised representation of why you go to university.

In addition, in the current cash strapped university, education faculties have been required to accept increasingly large numbers of students as the whole university funding depends on filling quotas and it is relatively cheap to educate future teachers.

So any negativity directed at education faculties for accepting low entry scores should really be aimed at the current funding system. I believe this will only get worse if fees are deregulated.

Education faculties are frequently pushed to take in the maximum number of students by university management. Somehow education continues as the poor relation within the university as the faculty functions as ‘the cash cow’ with constantly large enrolments requiring relatively low cost resources, but so often with little representation in senior management.

And yet the work the university teachers of teachers do is so evidently in the public interest. Not only do they undertake the essential role of preparing the nation’s teachers, they are also responsible for the development of future citizens. Schooling has a unique capacity for community building at all social levels.

Schools Australia-wide have been recognized for their achievements in working with multicultural students to build a sense of belonging and common purpose along with responsible community membership. And yet, despite this ongoing essential work, education becomes the whipping post for public criticism far more often than other university courses.

The life of an education graduate contrasts fundamentally with the current government’s adherence to the depiction of university as the training ground for a life of social and economic privilege. The fact that students continue to want to teach is one indication of the value they place in contributing to the public good and following their dream of leading a meaningful and productive life.

Like many others who are working, or have worked, in our universities preparing students to undertake a career in teaching, I am worried about the future for all Australians if fees increase for education degrees and if universities need to rely even more on their education faculties to bring in the cash.

I believe that eroding the public charter of our universities will have a great and negative effect, most particularly on the education of our nation’s teachers.

Judith Gill PhD is currently an Adjunct A/Professor in the School of Education at the University of South Australia where she worked for 25 years in teacher education. She has a longstanding interest in gender, work and education, particularly in terms of gender contexts of learning, which has involved investigating the experience of students in single sex school compared with coeducation, leading to the book Beyond the Great Divide: Single sex schooling or coeducation? (Sydney, UNSW Press 2004). Another line of enquiry is citizenship education as in the 2009 book Knowing Our Place: Children talking about identity, power and citizenship. (Routledge NY). More recently she has investigated engineering education, as seen in Gender Inclusive Engineering Education (NY Routledge 2009) and Challenging Knowledge, Sex and Power: Gender, work and engineering (NY Routledge 2014)