Single-sex schools linked to better student performance
March 20, 2019
Dr Kelvin Seah Kah Cheng from the NUS Department of Economics discusses single-sex learning environments in The Straits Times. According to Dr Seah, understanding whether students truly learn better under single-sex or co-educational (co-ed) conditions is important in informing current debates on which learning environment benefits students.
He argues that it is incorrect to assume that single-sex schools are better than co-ed ones by comparing between these students’ O- and A-level results because the composition of students in single-sex and co-ed schools is different. For instance, the former are typically highly selective and have very stringent entry requirements, so students entering single-sex schools have stronger academic abilities to begin with. Thus, we should look to in-depth examinations of data to properly assess the issue instead. Even then, research has generally demonstrated a neutral to positive effect when it comes to single-sex education, further supporting the notion that students learn better when exposed to peers of the same sex.
However, these results do not mean that we should convert all existing co-ed schools to single-sex schools. Dr Seah believes that such a change would also induce other effects, such as an alteration of the behaviours of teachers and parents, which might reverse the benefits of a single-sex educational policy. Nevertheless, the findings certainly challenge previous suggestions by members of the public to abolish single-sex schools.
Read the full article here.