The Student Room Group

Mixed 6th forms: good idea?

I have been asked to do a debate with three other people in my school as to whether our school's sixth form should allow boys. At the moment its an all girl's grammar school throughout the seven years. I think most schools in the area have a mixed sixth for which includes several grammar schools. Basically I'm looking for points for and against a mixed 6th form. PLease help!

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Reply 1
For:
University isn't female-only and girls may find it a shock to go from an all-girls school to a completely mixed environment.
The real world also isn't female-only and people have to get used to that at some point.

Against:
Girls and boys apparently learn better when separated.
Subjects which are typically male dominated may cause fewer girls to take them because they don't want to be the only girl in a class of boys.
Basically - what nikki said.

She made some excellent points.
Reply 3
I think it's important to have a mixed sixth form / school. You learn a lot from both male and female sides when growing up and maturing. You'd probably lose a lot from not socializing with the opposite sex as well. This is, of course, coming from moi who goes (and always has) to a mixed school so I'm purely guessing here.

Whilst I agree with nikkis points, the one I don't agree with is "apparently girls and boy learn better when separated". Personally, I couldn't work in a class full of males.
I think a mixed sixth form is good. It helps you mature for the 'real world'. As Nikki said if you haven't worked in a mixed environment and then go off to uni it will be a real shock to the system. Also by having boys at the sixth form the it will help all the years get used to having boys around in a learning environment.
Reply 5
Hey well I'm in one of the mixed 6th forms, is an all girls school 7-11 and then joins with the all boys school in 6th form and a few other 6th forms but this only happens when there is a serious timetable clash. The good bits are you get to make new friends and the lads a different attitude to the girls and you have more chance of been able to take the subjects you want to do. The bad bits include travelling between schools during dinner so you have 5 mins for lunch and communication can be poor as I miss assemballies I never find any information out. They are supposed to be joint but there is disagreements between the two schools on things like inset days etc so all your friends might be off and you have to go to school. Or worse case is that the school gets the winter sickness bug and you can't travel between the two schools and therefore miss half of your lessons for 2 weeks as mine did last spring.
Reply 6
Xtrm2Matt

Whilst I agree with nikkis points, the one I don't agree with is "apparently girls and boy learn better when separated". Personally, I couldn't work in a class full of males.

This is simply a logical fallacy. If you find the situation personally incredulous then it says nothing about the overall effectiveness of such a scheme whatsoever. I am sure that the OP wants their debate based on evidence, not illogical arguments or absurdly hypothetical premises.
Reply 7
mixed is fantastic, if you have equal numbers of both boys and girls.

My science class comes to mind where this imbalance makes learning very hard. There's seven girls and twenty-three boys. Sounds great for the girls, yeah? No. They are all so incredably arrogant and boastful that the girls feel very intimidated. As a result, the girls have all, generally, been performing worse than all the the boys in the class because - what looks like to me - the boys behaviour.

However, I had a geograpgy class where the ratio was about 1:3 for girls and boys. The teacher was a male who was also very arrogent and extreamly intellegent, so they never ever played up in that lesson.

It drives me fupping mad sometimes.


This is simply a logical fallacy. If you find the situation personally incredulous then it says nothing about the overall effectiveness of such a scheme whatsoever. I am sure that the OP wants their debate based on evidence, not illogical arguments or absurdly hypothetical premises.


If they wanted to do that, wouldn't they go on a stats website and compare performances of colleges that are single and mixed, but otherwise quite similar? It's nice to have some personal opinions too.
Reply 8
I go to an all girls sixthform. I really think the social interaction between guys and girls is necessary though. Especially for those who've gone through a single sexed school from age 4, as many people I know have.
Reply 9
Xtrm2Matt
Whilst I agree with nikkis points, the one I don't agree with is "apparently girls and boy learn better when separated". Personally, I couldn't work in a class full of males.


That's why I said "apparently". :smile: Studies say that people perform better when separated, but that's just an average trend. In reality, the best setting will vary from individual to individual.
Reply 10
AisAis

If they wanted to do that, wouldn't they go on a stats website and compare performances of colleges that are single and mixed, but otherwise quite similar? It's nice to have some personal opinions too.

I agree that it is nice to have some personal opinions; however, the OP is having a debate and therefore must stick to reasoning and evidence; irrelevant anecdotes have no value in this case.
Reply 11
I loved being in a single sex sixth form, but I did lots of extracurricular stuff with boys and always had done. I think single sex education is possibly better when you're younger - obviously I only know one side of the story, but it made the whole puberty thing a lot easier as everyone was in the same situations. As for sixth form, I don't know. My whole year became incredibly close and I don't think that would've happened if there had been guys.

While a co-ed environment prepares you for the "real world" in that there are (shock!) two genders, it's school, and that isn't the real world.It's important to have a mixed friendship group, but that can happen very easily out of school.

Also, practically, how many boys would go to an all-girls sixth form, at least for the first few years?

Sorry for the anecdote-yness!
Personally I attended mixed schools from pre-school right though to sixth form, so I've only experienced one side of the story, but I think mixed schools are better preparation for the real world because no university or workplace is single sex. Boys and girls can learn things from each other and learn to interact. However, I can see why single sex schools may get better results because girls may suffer due to the bad behaviour of boys and boys may suffer due to their bad behaviour when trying to impress girls. Single sex primary and secondary schools and mixed sixth forms and colleges may be the best solution because, in the last 2 years before university, you should really learn how to study and socialise in a mixed environment.
Reply 13
In some ways I wish our sixth form was mixed - I have quite tight parents so going out is a no-no, and thus I don't really have any male friends. I'm not that used to talking to guys, which is weird really, I just don't know how to behave around them or what they're thinking or anything :frown:
Reply 14
kellywood_5
Personally I attended mixed schools from pre-school right though to sixth form, so I've only experienced one side of the story, but I think mixed schools are better preparation for the real world because no university or workplace is single sex. Boys and girls can learn things from each other and learn to interact. However, I can see why single sex schools may get better results because girls may suffer due to the bad behaviour of boys and boys may suffer due to their bad behaviour when trying to impress girls. Single sex primary and secondary schools and mixed sixth forms and colleges may be the best solution because, in the last 2 years before university, you should really learn how to study and socialise in a mixed environment.

I completely agree, to separate one group from another (be that sexually, racially, whatever) may achieve better results in the short term since you get more conformity as opposed to diversity but eventually you will need to interact with the group. If you don't learn to do this from an early age I think people could struggle with it in the future.
Without having experienced both I could only conjecture :s:
Reply 16
calcium878
Without having experienced both I could only conjecture :s:

:ditto: However, my school is an all girls school; yet boys are allowed in the sixth form. I don't think it has that great an effect, simply because the majority of the places are taken up by girls who previously went to the school; followed by a considerably smaller percentage of people who come from elsewhere. As a result, considering the percentage of people coming from elsewhere is so small, the percentage of these who are boys is going to be even smaller. We've only had about 15 boys at maximum in a sixth form with a total of 240 people, and it really is too small to alter things drastically.
Reply 17
I think mixed 6th forms are a good idea. I go to a mixed school and if there wern't any lads I doubt our school would be able to run both the maths and computing courses that I take. Also I have a mixed group of friends, and we all get on really well, without the lads I don't think we'd all be as friendly.
Reply 18
wow. I cant even imagine what it would be like to go to a single-sex school.
Reply 19
kellywood_5
Single sex primary and secondary schools and mixed sixth forms and colleges may be the best solution because, in the last 2 years before university, you should really learn how to study and socialise in a mixed environment.


:ditto:

single sex primary and secondary
mixed sixthform/college

i think that works the best.