Girls' schooling 'sacrificed to help boys'

A 40-year drift away from single sex schooling has sacrificed girls' education in order to give struggling teenage boys a "wake-up call", according to one of the country's leading girls' school heads.

Vicky Tuck, head of Cheltenham Ladies' College, who will open the annual girls' school conference in Winchester, Hampshire, on Monday, said that boys' schools are increasingly going co-educational because they are struggling to recruit and to boost exam results.

She said girls are being used to improve their male classmates' education and are losing out on a focused women-only school life.

"What happens at boys' schools is there may be falling rolls, or their results may not be as good as they might like. They think they can solve that by widening the catchment and taking in girls."

"Girls are regarded as more diligent and they will pull up exam results and they assume the boys will respond and it will be a wake-up call for them."

Girls now outperform boys in nearly all subjects at GCSE and A-level, while across state and independent sectors in the UK the number of single-sex schools are shrinking.

Tuck said girls schools are free to cater solely to the needs of young women but when boys' schools go co-educational, both sexes can suffer.

"I think what happens is that boys feel sidelined. They can't compete so why try," she said.

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