Because the available evidence is actually far from being that clear or straightforward.

Only around a third of the methodologically valid studies show that girls do better in single sex environments and most of those fail to control for or eliminate significant confounding factors.

For example, in the review paper I posted in the article its very noticeable that the most of the studies which appear to show single sex education to be advantageous shoe now evidence of controlling for differences in class size or in things which are extremely difficult to quantify, such as the difference in ethos that may exist between different schools, or the use of different pedagogies in different schools when teaching the same curriculum.

So, for the one major UK study cited in that paper, the comparison being made is not just a matter of single sex vs co-educational but also, because of where single sex schools operate within the state system, one in a number of independent and grammar schools – plus a few girls-only Comps that used to be Grammar schools and which have retained their strong academic focus – being compared against bog standard co-educational comprehensives.

Against that, the studies which look to be based on the closest possible like for like comparison, which come from the US and compare single sex and co-educational Catholic schools (these having much greater degree of similarity in culture and ethos than a comparison of a single sex grammar and a co-educational comp) we find no evidence that girls benefit from single sex education.

What we have to be careful of here is that, as with many other things, single-sex education has it own lobby whose activities can tend to provide a distorted picture of reality – from the comparative paper it looks as if around half of all the published ‘research’ on this issue is more or less worthless because of serious methodological flaws and failings, and much of that research tends to originate from organisations who are conduct research to try to validate their preconceived beliefs in the merits of gender segregation rather than to gain an objective view of its likely merits and drawbacks.

What is this rant all about?

By the way, I agree heartily with every assertion in the piece. Going at McCarthy-Fry with a baseball bat to Don’t Stop Me Now would seem a bit crass, though – maybe Bohemian Rhapsody?

I honestly don’t see a substantial difference between religious morons and progressive morons. One rejects the science cos it goes against their beliefs (though they are certainly in a strict minority amongst religious types), the other rejects it cos its too difficult (or too masculine, or not post-modern enough). In fact, I think I almost prefer the religious excuse – it is ever so slightly less demeaning to students.

And the boys’ results? Or are we assuming (a) they don’t matter or (b) they were all doing perfectly well anyway? (c) that because underachieving boys can’t be framed as a gender discrimination issue, it doesn’t exist?

I’m pleased that the girls’ results improved (I’ve sisters who were science graduates in any case), but the trend for the last decade or so has been that even where female students are in the minority of exam entrants, they’re outperforming the boys. And in terms of numbers of entrants, this only applies to Physics and Maths. Undergraduate courses are another matter, and more work will need to be done…preferably not with policies developed by the likes of McCarthy-Fry.

As for the single-sex school argument, here’s an article from Education Guardian on the subject (and here are the replies). My summary would be:

– parents use single-sex education for girls as a covert form of selection
– there’s little research to support the argument or explain why single-sex education works for girls
– by contrast, there’s a great big steaming pile of gender assumptions masquerading as facts; the ones about boys (especially re. single-sex education) are usually negative
– there aren’t enough girls to make any strategy work (unless the bright boys form a minority with the girls, and the not-so-bright girls are lumped in with the rest of the boys)

A couple of studies have been cited here suggesting standards have fallen – albeit none has done so with complete authority. Are you aware of studies that have found the reverse?

Is it simply that university lecturers who rhapsodise about their knowledgeable and motivated student don’t get their comments reported?

And, at least on the circumstantial evidence here, people seem to think that papers are becoming easier or, at the very least, less rigorous.

My own experience of my A-level in physics in 1995 was that we used ten year old science text books (Nuffield I think) and that a good third of the chapters had been removed from the syllabus between publication and us sitting the exams. My teacher, incensed at the removals, refused us access to any test papers at all until the final term precisely in order to prevent us learning to the test. Pretty brave stuff for a teacher I think.

The whole system is geared towards churning through the material needed to pass the tests without ever putting any of what’s taught into any kind of context.

Rings true.

Also confused as to why it should matter, when teaching kids mechanics, to tell them which very-long-ago chap happened to discover the rule they’re learning. I’m fairly sure that whenever I was taught maths nobody mentioned the name of the Greek who came up with angle coefficients, nor the Arab who came up with zero. Historically interesting, but completely irrelevant to understanding physics.

I think the names are important because they make for a less dry subject – also it seems important to understanding science to learn how such people were inspired, how they created their hypotheses and theories. Newton’s apple, for example; or Archimedes’ bath.

The last part of that sentence is very true. Now that every single mark can be seen on your UCAS form, kids have to wring every mark out of it. An A isn’t good enough for some universities. It has to be an A as close to full marks as possible.

An 18 year old therefore has to spend extra time not broadening his knowledge, but perfecting his exam technique – from which they gain next to nothing. When I finished my A-levels the year before last, I knew the marking scheme for each subject like the back of my hand. I learnt only what needed to be learnt for the exam – nothing more as, what with all the practice papers, there wasn’t time. There also wasn’t the ethos that a broad curriculum mattered (apart from one teacher, Mr Jaques – I mention his name because, as he’s a soft old leftie he might just read this blog).

This going to a school that wasn’t desperately trying to maintain its league position (it wasn’t too strong on the old league tables front). I dread to think what it’s like in the ‘good schools’ where a slight drop in exam results means they drop out of the top 50…

Because its part of the language and standard nomenclature of science in the same wau that mathematics has Pythagoras; Theorem and Euclidian and Non-Euclidian Geometry. Its not just an affectation, or bigging up a dead guy, it actually has a very particular meaning in Physics, not least because there are a number of other strands of mechanics.

Off the top of my head, I recall there being two kinds of analytical/ vectorial mechanics (Lagrangian and Hamiltonian), Celestial mechanics, Einsteinian mechanics, Solid mechanics, Fluid mechanics, Soil mechanics, Statistical mechanics, Biomechanics and, of course, Quantum mechanics plus a few other topics that fall under the general heading of mechanics but don’t include the term itself, like Astrodynamics, Hydraulics and Acoustics.

Not to mention that Newton is also your starting point for the study of gravitation, optics, calculus (with Liebnitz) and binomial theorem, so he’s just a tad important in the grand scheme of things…

One thing I fully agree with unity on is that kids these days are working way harder than I ever did and coming out with worse qualifications. It’s so cruel.

It’s just such a conveniently ‘hell in handbasket; my personal experience trumps government stats; evil NuLab and their targets’ piece that my “nearly all stories with these characteristics are lies” detector is tripped, and I’d need strong(er than I’ve seen anywhere despite looking) evidence to go against that.

Also confused as to why it should matter, when teaching kids mechanics, to tell them which very-long-ago chap happened to discover the rule they’re learning. I’m fairly sure that whenever I was taught maths nobody mentioned the name of the Greek who came up with angle coefficients, nor the Arab who came up with zero. Historically interesting, but completely irrelevant to understanding physics.

That’s what so fucking annoying about the whole situation – what is taught in schools is now so closely regimented in order to fit the government’s managerialist obsession with measuring output that kids are left with no time to scope to develop a foundational understanding of the subjects they’re studying.

I’ve seen this crap first hand – my son’s school devoted six weeks of science lessons to the teaching of basic Newtonian mechanics and at the end of it I had to explain to him who Isaac Newton was because he was never mentioned once in the classroom. The whole system is geared towards churning through the material needed to pass the tests without ever putting any of what’s taught into any kind of context.

Up until about 20 years it was thought that but for those areas of the brain that deal with memory, once the brain’s structure had finished developing at around 2 years of age that was your lot – the organisation of the brain became fixed and largely unchangeable and impermeable to environmental influences.

Now, what is being found it that the capacity of the brain to reorganise and restructure its neural connections is far more extensive than anyone had previously thought, which has massive implications for everything the treatment of brain injury to our understanding of the processes of learning, memory. It’s a massive paradigm shift in neuroscience and something we’re only just beginning to get to grips with.

So, to give an illustration of how the game could change, I’ve noted that there is pretty solid evidence to support the idea of gender differences in learning styles and that this has influenced educationalists and policy makers who have reworked the manner in which children are taught in ways which are thought to better suit the learning style that ‘favours’ women.

The fact that we’ve adapted the delivery of education to what is thought to be a gender-linked trait is an implicit acceptance of the view that there are neurological differences between the genders that biologically determined and fixed – we change the system to better suit a ‘feminine’ style of learning because we can’t change the way women learn, because that’s somehow an innate function of their gender.

(And I do know than many feminists have a major aversion to anything that smacks of gendered biological determinism).

What neuroplasticity suggests is the different learning styles that are seemingly favoured by men and women may not be quite the fixed commodities that its been supposed – the apparent female preference for concrete/experiential learning may be predicated not on biology but on environmental influences derived from their culture into which they’re born, not because biology isn’t a factor, as some feminists prefer to believe, but because the interaction of environment and biology effectively rewires the brain, allowing to adapt to environmental and cultural influences.

I’m grossly oversimplify some brutal complex bleeding edge science here but that’s the general drift of things and it does have massive implications right across the board, not least for feminism and feminists because it does appear to hold out the possibility of integrating feminism’s primarily sociological view of gender and gender identity with a neurobiological theory of gender/identity without the two different approaches coming into conflict.

Gender identity may easily be both biological and cultural/sociological at the same time in addition to being a much more malleable quality that anyone on the biological side previously suspected.

When girls are taught science in single-sex classes they don’t have to pretend not to be interested, or hold back from getting involved.

I don’t buy the whole classroom etiquette thing, as mentioned in the main article, because I see that as an excuse and not an explanation.

Early socialisation may well prompt some girls to hold back in science lessons but as I see it, its the job of a good science teacher to recognise that and make an effort to ensure that lessons are delivered in an inclusive manner.

Early socialisation and prevailing cultural attitudes are, I think, the key issue here and the problem starts long before it reaches the classroom and is also reinforced by attitudes in the home and in the social environment outside the school gates, the lack of positive roles models and everything else that a basic Feminism 101 will tell you is a problem.

Gender segregation is a viable short-term workaround but it doesn’t address the real issues – although, if it produces a few more female scientists and engineers and provides a few more positive role models for young women who have an aptitude for science then its at least helping to move things in the right direction.

The risk, however, is that what should be seen as a short-term measure to help women overcome a surmountable barrier ends up becoming not only an easy cop out for policy makers which allows them to avoid tackling the actual causes but a means of legitimising and institutionalising gender segregation in schools in a manner which operates to the detriment of young women.

Maybe I’m just a little old fashioned but I still cling that the idea that its job of a physics teacher to teach me kid to understand and apply Newtonian mechanics, not just Google it.

How science is taught is important and it needs to be presented for what it is, a coherent body of knowledge not a pick’n'mix counter of unrelated concepts and ideas that you can dip in and out of as and when you feel like it.

Yes, knowledge and skills are important but in the sciences, the knowledge content provides the foundations from which students develop the skills.

In, say history, you can quite happily teach students how to carry out archival research using The Tudors as an example and then set them off to apply the skills they’ve developed on something like the French Revolution without having teach them about late 18th century France first.

In physics you can’t teach kids how to conduct experiments to test Newton’s law of motion and then tell them to apply the skills they’ve learned to the study of optics, you’ve got the teach the theory first before you can develop the skills to go with the knowledge content.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6942989.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/15/alevels.schools

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-lecturers-have-seen-standards-plummet-508360.html