Introduction to Gender-Segregated Education

Single-sex education also referred to as single-gender education and gender-isolated education, is the practice of conducting education with male and female students attending distinct classes, possibly in different buildings or schools. The practice of single-sex schooling was normal before the 20th century, mainly in secondary and higher education. Single-sex education in various cultures is supported based on tradition as well as religion and is still carried out in different parts around the world. Currently, there has been a boost of interest and founding of single-sex schools due to educational research. Single-sex education is practised in many Muslim majority states; whereas in other parts of the world, it is most prevalent in Chile, Israel, South Korea, and English-speaking countries mainly in Singapore, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.

In the Western world, single-sex education is primarily related to the private sector, with the public (state) sector being overwhelmingly diverse sex. However, in the Muslim world, the condition is the exact opposite as public schools are generally single-sex, while many private schools are mixed-sex. Motivations for single-sex education range from religious thoughts of sex segregation to beliefs that the sexes study and actin different manner, and so they flourish in a single-sex atmosphere. In the 19th century, in Western countries, single-sex girls’ finishing schools, and women’s colleges allowed women a chance of education at a time when they were deprived of the access to mainstream educational institutions. The former was mainly prevalent in Switzerland, whereas the latter in the US and the UK, which were considered as the founders in women’s education.

Defenders of Same-Sex Education

Defenders of same-sex schools hold fast to the belief that girls and boys benefit from distinct academic instruction. Advocates usually point to institutes experiences documented in landmark reports like The American Association of University Women’s “How Schools Shortchange Girls” as proof of extensive discriminations encountered by females in combined classrooms. The similar-sex educational procedure is also vacant as a route to advance lagging achievement for low-income students of colour, main boys in urban public schools. Equally, challengers believe that single-sex education continues old-style gender roles and “legitimizes institutional sexism,” whereas neuroscientists disprove the merits of gender variances between girl and boy brains. In fact, rather than producing more equitable schools for nonwhite students, some criticizers compare separating boys and girls to ethnically segregated schooling.

On the other hand, some studies discover exactly the opposite. Many studies prove zero variance between the two genders. The U.S. Department of Education currently undertook a widespread review of the facts and decided that the consequences were “equivocal”.In other words, there is no explicit evidence that can prove that students have more chances to succeed in single-sex schools.

Simultaneously, the U.S. Department of Education was looking for altering the federal rules that can result in more schools to separate students by gender. If the claims prove that gender segregation results in student achievement, the U.S. Department of Education would likely have been keen to publicize this information as part of this struggle. But the evidence did not.

Researchers have examined why students do exclusively well in nearly sex-segregated programs, even though various studies reveal sex segregation does not influence student success. They have reached to the conclusion that those singles sex schools that encourage high levels of achievement are not successful because they promote segregation. Instead, these particular schools are successful due to the reason of having small classes, capable teachers, parental participation, satisfactory funding, and a focus on fundamental academics. Certainly, these reasons encourage success in coeducational classrooms too.

As sex segregation doesn’t itself endorse student success, instead of spending the resources, time, and effort on the social experiment of separating public schools by gender, the effective educational method is to emphasize on what we know works, incorporating smaller classes, more parental participation, and more capital. These are considered as the secrets to success for students.

How does co-education benefit students?

When students participate in socializing, competence, and collaboration with students of the other gender at school, they are more prepared to succeed in the future. Real-life is not disconnected by gender, and young people need to learn, work, and play in all various kinds of situations, with all sorts of diverse people. One of the strong points of public schools is the chance that they provide students of diverse sexes, races, and religions to learn from each other. Certainly, these lessons are considered as some of the most significant that schools teach. Sex-segregated education leads to the wrong direction, by lessening the real diversity in education.

Concern has also been raised claiming that segregation of genders into separate classes leads to high gender stereotyping. The case was tested in a sample of 365 seventh-grade students attending a junior high school that delivers both gender-segregated (GS) and co-educational classes. It was revealed that for both boys and girls, the more GS classes they attended in the fall, the more gender-stereotyped they became in the spring. It was decided that Gender-segregated likely intensifies the salience of gender in the classroom, hence strengthening and promoting gender stereotypes. It is therefore argued that GS is a misguided method to address any educational difficulty that girls and boys might be encounter.

The topic of same-sex education is debated. Supporters argue that it helps student results including test scores, graduation rates, and resolutions to the behavioural problems. Adversaries, however, claims that proof for such impacts is exaggerated or non-existent, and instead debates that such segregation can encourage sexism and damages the development of interpersonal skills among the student.

Supporters of single-sex education believe that there are determined gender differences in both genders learn and act in educational settings and that such variations merit educating them distinctly. One type of this argument holds that male-female brain differences favour the execution of gender-specific teaching approaches, but such an argument has not reached to accurate scrutiny. Moreover, supporters of single-sex education claim that by separating the genders, students do not become unfocussed by the other gender’s actions in the classrooms