The benefits and drawbacks of coeducation

Abstract

The main focus of the research was to compare and contrast participants’ school experiences, from primary through to post-secondary to see if attending a co-educational or single sex school was beneficial to participants in their academic as well as social life. A semi-structured interview was conducted with eight participants aged eighteen to twenty-two from a similar socio-economic background, who were recruited using the snowball sampling method. The participants consisted of four male and four female. Although the respondents were not critical of the type of schooling they had been exposed to, they agreed that in single sex schooling, extreme gender behaviour, such as hyper-masculinity was more evident whilst in coeducation, these extreme behaviours were balanced out by the opposite sex. Most participants agreed that other factors affect the quality of schooling, rather than whether or not the school was coeducational or not. Participants felt mainly that tension between the sexes emerged during puberty, when boys and girls had issues over the way space was used at school. On the other hand, those who attended a coeducational school found transitioning from secondary to sixth form easier as they were already used to going to school with the opposite sex. None of the participants felt that teachers treated boys and girls differently, although some of the participants underlined that some boys tended to hog some of the resources available in schools.