Same-Sex Classrooms

I am writing because I am concerned about gender stereotypes hindering the learning of our middle school students. We should make the local middle schools same-sex, in order to raise test scores and allow our students to feel free to learn any subject they want. There is a lot of evidence in which children benefit from same-sex schools in the ‘Raising Boys’ Achievement Project’ (RBA) which was a four-year project (2000-2004) which focused on issues associated with the apparent differential

academic achievement of boys and girls at key stage 2 and key stage 4 in schools in England.

Academically the students do better, because the teachers are taught how to teach both sexes according to the way they learn best. This causes the students to quickly feel comfortable exploring non- traditional subjects. The focus of research in one triad, in the report was to contribute to the debate about

the potential of single-sex classes for boys’ and girls’ learning, and to consider under what circumstances,

if any, such classes might offer better opportunities for boys and girls. In so doing, the researchers

attempted to identify the essence of single-sex teaching in a particularly successful co-educational

comprehensive school serving a socially diverse white population in southern England, and to support the

transfer of this approach to two schools serving similar socio-economic contexts in Eastern England.

In the Originator school, single-sex teaching was one of a number of organizational strategies

which aimed to improve the achievement levels of boys and girls within the context of establishing an

achievement culture within the school, with high aspirations for and expectations of all students. Initially

tightly targeted at boys and girls who were perceived as being in danger of under-achieving in English at

GCSE, single-sex teaching was subsequently expanded and introduced with middle ability sets in