Check out this answer from Consensus:
The evidence on the benefits of single-sex education for child learning is mixed. While some studies suggest modest academic advantages and social benefits, particularly for girls, others indicate that single-sex education does not significantly outperform coeducational schooling. Moreover, the potential for reinforcing gender stereotypes and the complex policy implications must be carefully considered. Overall, the effectiveness of single-sex education appears to be context-dependent, and more research is needed to explore its impact across different populations and educational settings.
The debate over the effectiveness of single-sex (SS) education versus coeducational (CE) schooling has been ongoing for decades. Proponents argue that separating boys and girls can enhance academic performance and reduce distractions, while critics claim it reinforces gender stereotypes and offers no significant academic benefits. This article reviews the current research to determine whether single-sex education is beneficial for child learning.
Academic Performance
Several studies have examined the impact of single-sex education on academic performance with mixed results. A comprehensive meta-analysis of 184 studies involving 1.6 million students found that uncontrolled studies showed modest advantages for single-sex schooling in mathematics performance but not in science performance. However, controlled studies revealed only trivial differences between SS and CE schooling, with some cases even favoring CE schooling for girls’ educational aspirations1. Similarly, a scoping review of 70 papers concluded that single-sex education alone does not significantly influence students’ academic performance, post-secondary plans, or career readiness2.
Gender Differences in Academic Self-Concept
Research has also explored how single-sex education affects students’ perceptions of their academic abilities. A study using data from the National Child Development Study found that boys had higher self-concepts in mathematics and science, while girls had higher self-concepts in English. Single-sex schooling was shown to reduce the gender gap in academic self-concept, suggesting that it may help mitigate gendered perceptions of academic abilities4.
Long-Term Academic Attainment
The long-term impact of single-sex education on academic attainment has also been investigated. One study focusing on British individuals born in 1958 found that single-sex schooling was positive for girls at age 16 but neutral for boys. However, at later ages, single-sex schooling was neutral for both sexes. Interestingly, single-sex schooling was linked to the attainment of qualifications in gender-atypical subject areas for both sexes, both during school years and later in life5.
Classroom Interactions and Engagement
An evaluation of single-sex teaching in a coeducational comprehensive school in England revealed that girls consistently achieved better results than boys in most subjects. However, the relative improvement levels of both girls and boys over time were similar and significantly higher than the national average. This suggests that single-sex teaching can be effective in certain contexts, particularly when it comes to classroom interactions and student engagement6.
Social and Emotional Benefits
While academic outcomes are often the focus, some research indicates that single-sex education may offer social and emotional benefits, particularly for middle-school girls. A study found that 6th-grade girls in single-sex classrooms reported improved academic performance, increased focus, and reduced social anxieties compared to their peers in mixed-sex classrooms. This suggests that single-sex education can provide a supportive environment that helps girls navigate the challenges of adolescence9.
Policy and Equity Considerations
The policy implications of single-sex education are complex. In the U.S., single-sex public schooling has been promoted as a means to improve the educational experiences of low-income youth of color. However, research indicates that single-sex education may reinforce racialized stereotypes and essentialized notions of gender, rather than addressing the structural inequities that contribute to low academic achievement8. Additionally, a study in Thailand found that single-sex schooling was more effective for female students, while coeducational schooling was more effective for male students, largely due to peer effects rather than specific characteristics of the schooling format7.
Is single-sex education beneficial for child learning?
Diane Halpern has answered Unlikely
An expert from Claremont McKenna College in Psychology, Cognitive Science, Education
For a question as complicated as which type of student composition leads to better outcomes, we cannot use the results of any single research project or even a few that support our beliefs. The research literature on this question is very large, and both sides of the debate have been known to “cherry-pick” findings that support what they believe to be true. The only way to answer this question is by analyzing all of the studies at the same time. This is called meta-analysis. It is a well-known procedure that is used in all of the sciences. We also have to look at many different possible outcomes—maybe the effect is in academic outcomes or perhaps more girls and boys decide to enter fields that are not typical for them (e.g., physics for girls and nursing for boys). There are also a host of other possible outcomes including enhanced self-esteem and so on.
Fortunately, we have an excellent meta-analysis that addresses this question (Pahlke, Hyde and Allison, 2014, Psychological Bulletin). The authors analyzed 184 studies, with a total of 1.6 million students in grades K-12. When analyzing research that bears on the question of single sex versus coed schooling there are two important conditions that must be met:
- a) The researcher must control for student performance before the students entered single-sex schools. Because most single-sex schools are private, they often charge a hefty tuition and the children who attend are generally from a higher socioeconomic status than a sample of children in coed schools. For example, a single-sex girls’ school opened in Texas. After one or two years, the proponents of single-sex education claimed that the girls in the single-sex school performed better than the girls at a nearby coed school. But they did not take into account the fact that the girls in the single-sex school were performing higher than the control group of girls before they entered the single-sex school. It seems that the single-sex school selected girls who were high achievers before they entered the single-sex school. Thus, we can only rely on studies that control for possible differences between single-sex and coed school children before the groups get separate education (there are many ways to do this—some are statistical);
- b) When sample sizes are very large, such as the one used in the meta-analysis, everything analyzed is statistically significant. For this reason, researchers must use “effect sizes”—an index that tells whether a difference between two groups is essentially none or if it is large or small, or medium.
Here is the conclusion from the meta-analysis: “Controlled studies, however, showed only trivial differences between students in SS versus CE, for mathematics performance (g =0.10 for girls, 0.06 for boys) and science performance (g = 0.06 for girls, 0.04 for boys), and in some cases showed small differences favoring CE schooling (e.g., for girls’ educational aspirations, g = 0.26). Separate analyses of U.S. studies yielded similar findings (e.g., for mathematics performance g = 0.14 for girls and 0.14 for boys). Results from the highest quality studies, then, do not support the view that SS schooling provides benefits compared with CE schooling.” Thus, based on the best statistical analysis available, neither coed nor single-sex schools can claim to produce better outcomes.
The same conclusion resulted from other analyses of multiple studies. For example, a critical review was funded by the U.S. Department of Education (Doc # 2005-01). The general conclusion of this review was that the existing data are equivocal, with some data suggesting that single-sex education could be helpful, much data showing no evidence, and some data suggesting that single-sex education can be harmful. The Final Report for the Canadian Centre of Knowledge Mobilisation concluded that “The research we reviewed is too tenuous to support the organization of single-sex classrooms or schools” (p. 16). In a project overview written by one of the authors of this study, Underleider (2008) concluded, “The majority of studies found no significant difference in achievement between students’ education in single-sex and co-educational environments.” A review by the American Association of University women using multiple data sets also concluded that “There is no evidence that single-sex education in general ‘works’ or is ‘better’ than coeducation.
In a report released by the Office for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD), the researchers examined the school performance of boys and girls at age 15 across 32 countries. Data from the Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) for 2000 and 2006 were analyzed. They found some, on average, differences in the school performance of girls and boys, with girls performing at a higher level in reading and boys performing at a higher level in mathematics. The authors of the OECD report performed several analyses comparing student achievement in single-sex and coeducational schools using their large international data base. Recognizing the problem with comparing schools when there are pre-existing group differences, they took into account “both the students’ and the schools’ socio-economic background, given that in some countries single-sex education is associated with higher socio-economic intake, fee-paying schools” (p. 45). Differences between single-sex and coeducational schools disappeared. Across the countries some favored single-sex schools and others favored coeducational schools, but there were no consistent patterns and such results are likely with multiple comparisons. The authors wrote that some researchers believe that single-sex schools are favorable for the educational outcomes of girls, but “the evidence from PISA does not uniformly support the notion that females tend to do better in a single-sex environment” (p. 45). Thus, the results from this large-scale international study failed to find benefits for single-sex education.
What’s the Harm?
If there are no advantages to either system, then what is the harm of single-sex education? School is preparation for adult life. How can boys and girls learn how to interact as equals in the workplace if they have no experience interacting as equals in school? Can we expect a male, for example, to work comfortably with a female supervisor if he has never interacted with females as intellectual equals? Children need to learn how to respect and get along with a wide variety of other people, which includes the other half of the human race. Too many valuable lessons in working together and learning from each other are missed when education is segregated by sex. By designing education that is differentiated for boys and girls, educators are implicitly endorsing the idea that there is little diversity among girls or among boys. The notion that girls learn one way and boys another way ignores the massive ways in which girls differ from each other and boys differ from each other. Some single-sex boys’ schools start the day with a run—many girls would benefit from such a start of the day and many boys would be better served with a different opening activity. Similarly, many girls’ schools use cooperative projects, but both boys and girls need to learn how to cooperate and compete.
Anecdotes Are Not Data
Everyone loves a good story. It is as though humans are especially tuned to information about the experiences and beliefs of other people, especially people we know or people who are similar to us. We have come to respect the expertise of people with lots of experience, but while experience can provide people with insights that need to be systematically studied, personal experience is not a substitute for quality research. It is often difficult for people to believe that their personal stories are not as good as high-quality research when making a decision. Many people prefer a single story about the effectiveness of an intervention (in this case single-sex education, but it could be so-called “healing crystals,” or bracelets that supposedly enhance one’s physical strength, or cures for autism) to a well-designed large-scale study. This point was made in a review of the book Snake Oil Science that examined why some people do not care what the studies say about medical cures because they distrust science and statistics; people prefer their own personal experiences, and cannot see their own biases (Zuger, 2007). There are at least as many anecdotes that support the superiority of coeducational schooling as there are that support single-sex education. Proponents on each side are convinced that their personal experiences provide evidence for their position. Educational policy cannot be determined by which side has the better anecdotes or the longer list with more superlatives. This is not a valid way to evaluate programs.
The Crisis in Education is Real
There is a real crisis in education. The crisis in education is not a boy or girl crisis. It is a crisis for low income children, but more often boys, from low income families and racial, ethnic, and language minority groups. There is no crisis for boys from middle class and wealthy homes. They are achieving at higher rates than ever before—entering college in greater numbers and achieving far better than girls from similar economic backgrounds at the highest levels of standardized tests. The four-year high school graduation rates for Asian boys and girls are 70% and 73%. The same data for White boys and girls are 74% and 79%. But the real gap is not the few percentage points for boys and girls, but it is gap for Hispanic (49% for boys and 58% for girls) and Black students (48% for boys and 59% for girls; Green & Winters, 2006). Sex differences in learning styles cannot be used to explain the large differences among boys and girls from different racial and ethnic groups, which swamp differences between the sexes. There is no simple fix for these problems, and segregated schools are not a solution. Single-sex schools encourage sex role stereotyping and are particularly harmful to girls and boys who do not conform to their respective sex role stereotypes.
The Rhetoric of Choice
Single-sex schooling advocates argue that even if single-sex schools are not beneficial to all students, they may be beneficial to some students. In fact, there are no data that have identified the type of child who might benefit from single-sex education. The same characteristics that are associated with success in coeducational schooling also predict success in single-sex schooling. Students who are academically motivated, feel connected to their school, come from educated and higher socioeconomic homes tend to perform better in all types of schools than students without these characteristics.
Single-sex schooling is expensive. Funds spent on training teachers in nonexistent “gender-specific learning styles” could be better spent on training them to teach science, mathematics, and reading, or to integrate boys and girls more completely in the learning environment. (Many of the strongest advocates of single-sec schools charge high fees to teach teachers how to cater to each sex. There is clearly a financial motive for many of the strongest advocates.) Single-sex schools also present scheduling nightmares if schools offer all three instructional options (all-boys, all-girls, and coeducational classes) for every subject. Students will have to give up some preferred classes to fit into a schedule that allows them to attend their choice of single-sex and coeducational classes.
Finally, any form of segregation undermines equality. Public schools are no longer permitted to segregate schools by race or religion (even though the latter is common in private education). In a democratic society, there is no more justification for sex segregation than there is for racial segregation.