The irony is I never really was a right cunt, me, at school. I was an unremarkable quiet kid who mostly got on with stuff.

And we all wish we could dance like YATR.

E10 Rifle wrote:


Reduces the number of boners in class, though. And it means girls don't have to pretend not to get math.

I'm not particularly dogmatic about this. The evidence on the topic is pretty mixed (and it's a difficult thing to study properly since getting a properly randomizes experiment ain't easy). But the "school is about preparing people for society" bit seems a bit weak, for reasons Tubby pointed out - would you really make the argument that students from co-ed high schools are significantly better prepared for life than students from single-sex schools? Presumably there is plenty of potential sources of evidence for this - if no one's found it yet, my guess is that it's not true.

Yes, I would make that argument. Apart from the fact that the reverse claim seems counter-intuitive, personal experience suggests this to me (although this would be contradicted, reasonably enough, by Tubby and others that had a positive experience of single sex school, I am sure).

Also, it fits in with my general ideology that all schools should be state-run secular co-ed schools. I will, however, have a look at the research into this and report back

I'm not quite sure what the "evidence" people are looking for on this subject would be, and how it would settle the argument, given that Gramski and Bored have politically quite different positions about what education is for. What, precisely, would that "evidence" be looking to tell us? Though Bored's "dogmatic" principles seem fine by me.

(Could someone point me in the direction of the OECD report referred to here? Ta.)

I can't, but I endorse wholeheartedly the sentiment in the URL.

Whatever my schooling cost, it wasn't worth it for Latin and playing on good cricket pitches.

Nothing But The Best Cricket Pitches For The Workers!

Actually, playing on crap ones could've helped the rest of us learn how to play unpredictable spin late, and how to cut, nudge and nurdle. Not in my case, though, I was just a piss-poor batsman. But it meant you could buff up your bowling averages with balls that kept low or spat up out of nowhere.

(Sorry, everyone else)

TonTon wrote:


Possibly this one, TT?

E10 Rifle wrote:


Judging what you said about the Sunday league game you saw at Cheltenham a while ago, I think my alma mater might have gone over to the bad pitches side.

Maybe the groundsman changed.

There's this, which will be of interest even if it's not the piece referred to in that article.

It will be something from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), I;m sure. Given me an hour or two and I'll find it.

Voila!. This is definitely the one.

E10 - for evidence of effectiveness, we're doing this on Bored's terms. I will take any study that suggests that provides any evidence whatsoever that students who do secondary school in mixed-gender schools are better socially-adjusted or otherwise able to cope in the world than those who go to single-sex. I don't think such data exists, which is why I described that as an argument against single-sex schools as being pretty weak.

There are a bunch of papers which try to look at outcomes of mixed-sex vs. single-sex education in terms of things like test results. Methodologically, they tend to range from so-so to crap. I haven't kept up on the lit - a decade ago, the consensus seemed to be that the evidence pointed to single-sex being good for girls and a wash for boys. I don't know what the consensus is these days.

Yes, but this isn't an argument about "evaluated outcomes" - it's an argument about political philosophy and (sorry to frighten you with the I word) ideology. You can't settle it with graphs, one way or the other. Bored thinks it's a good idea to educate kids in an inclusive and integrated environment because these things are good in and of themselves. And I agree with him.

The consensus presently (from memory) is that single sex schools are better for girls - academically, of course - and about the same as co-ed school for boys.

In terms of priorities, getting rid of single sex schools is less important than getting rid of religious and privately run schools as there isn't anything like the creaming off of talented teachers or pupils nor the influence of religion or private companies in the teaching of children.

E10 Rifle wrote:


My default position on mixed-sex education is the same as yours, but I'm open to contrary arguments based on evidence. I mean, in the absence of evidence, what does the phrase "good in and of itself" mean other than "I have prejudices"?

Another "buried by the Olympics" story here

Toby Young (who hasn't yet realised that his new readers in the Sun don't care about free schools) wrote this up as freeing schools from "union-approved qualifications".

Well, if by "prejudicies" you mean "principled political positions" then yeah, you're right. Though "prejudices" is quite a loaded way of describing them. What I mean is, if you think exposing your children to a mixed-sex environment is a good thing for them, then the "evidence" can't be anything other than, well, that they were exposed to a mixed-sex environment.

Until "getting on well with a range of people" can be deduced scientifically, I'm not sure where you can go with it.

Education debates are inevitably a battle of ideas - or "prejudices" - I'm not sure who actually is loftily neutral about it really.

There is a part of this article from the Independent yesterday which, paraphrased, sums up my philosophy about the whole of education - The point of education...is to give children emotional literacy as well as academic skills.

If you take away the other 50% of the population that the children are going to meet, I can't see how they will ever achieve this fully

But anyway, we're dancing on heads of pins of broad agreement here: and on that theme, the continued placing of Toby Young's foot in his mouth can only be a good thing really. The more this transparent self-publicising fuck-brain becomes the public face of the Free School movement the better for us, really.

Hold on, Gove is the public face of Conservative education policy and people are taking him seriously. Literally, anyone can make it up as they go along (as long as they have the right connections)