Single vs mixed schools: Clues to informed choices

Kampala

Whether to send children to single sex or co-educational schools is a question that troubles many parents. Many of the traditionally good performing secondary schools were founded by missionaries and tended to be single schools.

Until the turn of the century, Kings College Budo was the only mixed school that consistently appeared among the top ten performing schools.
The rest of the top 15 schools were; in no particular order, Mt St Mary’s Namagunga, Gayaza High, Nabisunsa Girls, Trinity College Nabbingo, Mary Hill, Bweranyangi Girls, Busoga College Mwiri, St Mary’s Kisubi, Namilyango College, Ntare School, St Henry’s Kitovu and Ombaci.

Kibuli SS, Kawempe Muslim and Nyakasura School were the only other mixed schools that matched their counterparts. However, the advent of private institutions has changed the status quo, with almost all of the top performing private schools founded on a co-educational basis.

For example, the schools that sent the most students to Makerere last year included St Mary’s Kitende, Uganda Martyrs Namugongo, Nalya SS, Seeta High, Buddo SS, Katikamu SS, Lubiri SS and Namirembe Hillside, which are all mixed schools. So, do students perform better in single or co-educational schools?

Philosophical view
The ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, said that schooling in a mixed school creates a feeling of comradeship. He advocated teaching of both the male and female sexes in the same institution without showing any discrimination in imparting education.

Ms Annet Ssamula, a child counselor and psychologist at Outreach Mbuya HIV/Aids Initiative says girls perform better in what are perceived to be ‘male’ subjects like Chemistry when they are away from the influence of boys, while the boys will do better at ‘female’ subjects, like English, when they are away from girls.

She says girls who lack self-confidence become bolder when they join single-sex schools. “You know everything depends on the self-esteem one wields. In a single-sex setting, girls tend to drop their typical shyness and become bold. They also become more competitive and embrace many activities with gusto without worrying about appearing like tom boys.” says Ms Ssamula who studied at Trinity College Nabbingo.

“A strong reason for co-education is that separating children for a number of years means they will not be mixing and learning about each other,” says Simon Baron-Cohen, a professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Meanwhile, professor Alan Smithers, the director of education and employment research at the University of Buckingham says: “There are no overriding advantages for single-sex schools on educational grounds. Studies all over the world have failed to detect any major differences.”

Personal experience
Dr Irene Nabakka Kiyemba, who studied at Bukulula Girls School in the early 1980s, says students in single-sex schools are accustomed to work quietly on the assigned task until it is completed. “There were indeed fewer episodes of foolish behaviour. Some people talk about cases of girls sleeping with fellow girls. I never saw such doing our times, may be they were done behind-the-scenes,” she says.

She says the nuns who form almost the entire academic staff team were strict disciplinarians who could not just let wayward behaviours happen on the school campus. “That too was part of the learning process. We were taught that if we wanted to become adults who could be trusted to handle important matters or to supervise other adults, it was important that each of us first learn self-discipline.

“The vast majority of girls did master this skill. Our class produced many teachers, nurses, supervisors and even doctors and lawyers. This was quite an accomplishment at a time when women were rare commodities in those professions,” she told Education Guide.

Social imbalance
But Dr Kiyemba admits that she missed socialising with boys which also affected her after school. “Indeed one important aspect of our education was missing: we lacked the knowledge and ability to interact meaningfully with peers of the opposite sex. I blame my first unhappy marriage on this deficit, but who knows? It may have happened anyway,” she adds.

Ms Irene Nankya who went to both single and co-educational schools prefers the latter. “We need each other and such an environment (mixed) helps one to develop mentally, physically and learn better,” she says.

Empirical evidence
A study conducted in Britain last year discovered that girls in single-sex schools perform much better academically and are more likely to stay in education than their counterparts in mixed schools. The largest improvements came among those who did badly at primary school, before they go to single-sex schools, according to the study, commissioned by the Good Schools Guide-UK.

Researchers found that girls struggling academically when they started secondary school benefited most from being in girls-only schools. It was also discovered that while both girls and boys did better in single schools than they did in mixed schools, the single-sex advantage was greater for the boys than for the girls.

Israel study
Another key study of 425,138 high school students carried out in Israel in 2006 suggested that when there is a big proportion of boys in a class, both boys and girls do worse academically. Results improved as the percentage of girls in a class increased. The biggest improvement in results came when girls significantly outnumbered boys.

Putting girls with the boys helped the boys. These researchers did not find a case for mixed schools benefiting girls, and emphatically not when girls are the minority, as they are in many mixed independent schools.

Assistant commissioner for secondary education, Mr Francis Agula, concurs with various research that students, particularly girls in single-sex schools, perform better than their counterparts in mixed schools. “There is no technical reason I can give. It is by coincidence that they perform better than their counterparts in mixed school. I can attribute that to social issues,” he told Education Guide.

“In the overall examinations released recently, girls topped boys but this doesn’t mean that they are better than boys. The boys on average perform better.” He explained that single schools have structures that address direct concerns of a particular sex but in mixed schools, attention is always divided to address both sexes. “The discipline in schools also differs. Incidences of strikes in girls’ single schools are very rare. This gives a girl child ample time to concentrate on studies,” he added.

Mr Ronald Ddungu, the deputy head teacher of Gayaza High Schools agrees that girls in single-sex schools perform better because the “ environment is conducive enough “for them to concentrate on studies and they are free from distraction from boys. “In mixed schools teachers tend to give boys hard tasks and handle girls with soft hands .But when they are here they struggle on their own and excel,” Mr Ddungu says.

Mr Ddungu says in a mixed school, the effect of puberty is worse on the girl-child. “This is a very difficult stage because girls tend to focus more on things that attract boys thus making them concentrate more on relationships rather than academics,” he says.