[The Guardian, Tuesday November 16, 2004]

Por Rebecca Smithers, education editor

Private single sex girls' schools are bucking the national trend by educating significantly more female mathematicians, engineers, scientists and linguists than schools catering for both sexes, according to research published yesterday.

The research cast fresh light on the argument about whether boys and girls do better taught in single or mixed sex groups and triggered a heated debate between private school heads and those from the state sector who still hail teaching mixed groups as "more natural".

The study shows that girls in single sex schools are less likely to be steered away by parents or teachers from what are still - inaccurately - perceived to be boys' subjects.

The research, carried out by the Girls' Schools Association (GSA) - an umbrella group representing 200 private girls' schools - suggested that bright girls were failing to take up science and maths in a co-educational environment because they were intimidated by boys who were often rowdy and liked to show off.

The results of the survey of more than 5,000 pupils attending schools which belong to the GSA - whose annual conference opened yesterday in Staffordshire - inevitably focused on whether girls learn differently from boys, particularly at puberty, when both sexes experience very different hormonal and developmental changes.

The GSA's argument, in a nutshell, is that girls will always thrive academically in single sex classes. They have plenty of time to get to know boys outside the classroom and later in life.

The research, based on new figures for the last academic year, revealed that the take-up of maths, science and modern languages was much stronger in girls' independent schools than in schools nationally. At the same time, many of their leavers go on to choose a university course in engineering, maths or science - in stark contrast to the national shortage where numbers have plummeted among both sexes. The result has been the closure of an unprecedented number of university chemistry and language departments.

In her opening speech to the conference, GSA president Cynthia Hall, head of the school of St Helen and St Katharine, Abingdon, said: "I am not surprised that more mathematicians, engineers, scientists and linguists are coming out of single-sex girls' schools.

"Girls are encouraged, in GSA schools, to tackle harder subjects and to be confident that they can do well in them."

The survey found over 90% more pupils attending girls' schools chose physics or chemistry at A-level compared to all girls nationally. More than 80% more took French, German or Spanish A-level and 70% more studied A-level maths. The difference is particularly striking in chemistry, where 25.5% of girls chose chemistry at A-level in GSA schools, representing 8.1% of GSA entries compared with 4.6% nationally. There are also girls-only schools in the state sector, mainly but not predominantly grammar schools which traditionally educated one sex only. The Association of Maintained Girls' Schools which represents the state sector, is to publish its own figures separately on girls' take-up of science. In total, only 7% of girls are educated in fee-paying or state single sex schools.

The numbers of girls at private single sex schools opting to take languages is also significant. Far more pupils in the girls' schools take A-levels in French, Spanish and German than their counterparts nationally.

GSA members at the conference yesterday gave their personal perspective. Nicholas Beesley, head of Beechwood Sacred Heart school, said: "Having taught science and maths in co-ed schools for 16 years and in girls' schools for 12 years, it is clear to me that girls do not take up these subjects in a co-ed environment because they are intimidated by the boys."

On languages, Marion Gibbs, headmistress of James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich, south-east London, said: "The national curriculum has reduced the time available for the study of more than one language in many state-maintained schools. Their greater curriculum autonomy has enabled most independent schools to continue to offer students at least two languages."

Mrs Hall also told delegates that she was infuriated by teachers who insisted that it was normal for boys and girls to be taught together: "What I am interested in is what benefits girls ... It makes me mad when I hear heads of co-ed schools dismiss single-sex education with the comment that the co-ed classroom is natural, as if being natural is all the justification one ever needed for anything. I believe that most girls benefit enormously from being in a single-sex environment during their school years."

All-girl schools can meet girls' needs most easily, she told the conference at Alton Towers: "They can be constantly returned a positive image of their capability, their promise and their value to the world."

In her speech, Mrs Hall said teaching boys and girls together could be damaging for the education of the girls: "In the teenage years, when girls are finding out who they are, the ability to camouflage in order to fit into a given environment is a highly perilous quality for girls. It particularly makes them vulnerable to verdicts of others about their own incompetence. These years for girls coincide with the equally important years for boys in which they are testing out their strength, voicing claims they cannot yet deliver, seeing how much they can dominate the world around them."

She said schools needed to prepare girls for "the mixed community of university and of the workplace ... and GSA schools have found varied and creative ways of offering their pupils co-ed experience socially so that they are not at a disadvantage."

State school leaders rejected her claims. David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "It sounds to me very much like special pleading. I'm absolutely certain that boys and girls both do well in mixed schools."

There was "no evidence whatsoever" that single sex classrooms help either boys or girls with their particular challenges in school. He went on: "I can understand the president of GSA's wish to run a propaganda campaign for single sex education but it would have been more sensible if it had been based upon valid evidence and had not involved exaggerated criticisms of those who run mixed schools and run them very successfully."

He added: "Her views are really rather old-fashioned and outdated."