This article was published in https://www.navarraconfidencial.com/2015/09/17/cual-es-la-diferencia-entre-segregar-y-diferenciar/ on 15th Sept. 2015. We reproduce it now because it has become relevant again.

Imagine a cafeteria where there are women's restrooms and men's restrooms. This is to differentiate. If, on the other hand, black women could not enter the women's restrooms, that would be segregate.

If you enter a clothing store you will find men's clothing and women's clothing, probably in different sections. We could say that clothes are differentiated by sex. If you are not allowed to enter the store because you are a Christian, that is segregation.

When someone is going to buy some shoes, they expect them to be differentiated by size, to buy those that fit their feet. If instead of giving him shoes of his size they sold different shoes and worse for foreigners, that would segregate.

In any sport there are competitions differentiated by sexes. There is an explanation for this. If there were only 100-meter races for both sexes, women would never win medals and would not even be in the finals. Usain Bolt's mark is 9.58 seconds, while that of Florence Griffith is 10.49. Griffith could not enter any men's final in that time.

It’s evident this differentiation responds to a previous reality: that men and women are different, which either does not require further demonstration or there will be no way to persuade someone otherwise. The striking thing is that some politicians, not daring to use the word "discriminate", because they can not sustain it or argue its use, instead choose the word "segregate" instead of "differentiate". Because we are not wrong. If single-sex schools discriminated against girls or boys, offering less education than some others, the question would not be to withdraw the public fund but to close them.

Regarding the academic issue, it is a fact that failure and drop-out is a fundamentally male problem. Only 8% of girls drop out of school at the end of ESO, compared to 24% of boys. That is, 75% of the abandonment is male. Only 1 out of every 3 males enter the university, compared to 2 out of every 3 girls. It’s quite obvious that, if men and women were indistinguishable and identical, the rates should logically be 50%.

UNESCO, in article 2 of the Convention on the fight against discrimination in the field of education, considers sex education as totally acceptable; understanding that it is not done to harm one of the two sexes, as is logical.

From this point, it seems reasonable that many parents, seeing that boys and girls are different and obtain different results, think that in order to get equal results, a different way of educating them is needed. As different results are obtained it seems that it is not differentiating.

Obviously you can not share this approach. Or you can combine this approach with other factors and other approaches. In fact, most parents choose mixed education. What does not seem very democratic or very tolerant is that you impose your criteria on the children of others. Surely you do not want others to impose their views on education to their children.

And then there's the matter of the results.

If 25% of container burnings in Navarra were committed by students from single-sex schools, say, it would be logical that there was a great concern with single-sex education. If, on the contrary, the single-sex schools are always among those that obtain better results in the Selectividad or in PISA, it does not seem that there is an extraordinarily serious problem with them.

We can choose between educational freedom for all at all times or educational imposition by turns. Or does anyone think that he will be able to impose his education on others when he commands and freely choose when the ones opposite win? With educational freedom we all win, if only for intelligent selfishness.

Spanish Minister of Education, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, says that single-sex school doesn't segregate; it's just one of the options parents can choose.