Benefits of Co-Education

List of 3 items.

• Academic Achievement

  There is no well-designed research showing that either co-education or a single-sex education leads to improved academic performance. The reality is that students thrive in exceptional learning environments with highly qualified and committed teachers ...

  Large studies of students in high school mathematics classes, for example, show no gains for girls in girls-only classes or boys in boys-only classes – boys and girls in mixed-sex classes posted the same academic results. The most powerful effect on mathematical achievement, as in any other subject, is the quality of the teacher and the nature of the teacher’s expectations. A teacher’s genuine belief that all students can learn has one of the greatest effects on student achievement.

• Different Brains?

  The differences between boys and girls are often overplayed in the popular media. It is more dramatic and exciting to declare that boys and girls come from different planets than to emphasize the far more numerous and significant similarities between them...

  The position that boys and girls are fundamentally different in terms of their learning is not supported in the best academic research, and top-notch experts who study how children learn reject the idea that boys and girls have competing needs in education.
  
  

  The fact is that boys and girls are far more alike than different, and differences within boy groups or girl groups are often greater than differences between boys and girls. So while we have all heard versions of the claim that boys and girls have different innate learning styles, reputable researchers tell us that there is no such thing as a brain-based need to teach girls and boys in different ways.

• Social Development

  Well-established research tells us that when people are sorted into categories – by race, sex, ethnicity, or even eye or hair colour – prejudice breeds. An intergroup bias is a preference for the “in-group” over the “out-group.”

  When segregation by any particular trait is sustained over time, people view the members of their own group as diverse and distinct and adopt simple stereotypes about the other group: “we” are unique and complex while “they” all show unvarying traits and tendencies.

   

  A co-educational school discourages children from perceiving either boys or girls as an “out-group” lacking in individuality and value. Not only are all children treated as individuals, but no single element of a child’s identity is separated out as his or her defining feature.