The female pupils at Notre Dame High in Glasgow are getting to grips with a seismic change to their school - and some are finding it harder than others. The school is now more “chaotic”, “less comfortable”. One student believes it has lost its uniqueness. And the reason, they say, is quite simple: boys.

The school - a few minutes’ walk from the bustle and undergraduate bohemia of Byres Road in the city’s West End - started admitting boys less than a year ago, for the first time since it was founded in 1897. 

In August 2021, 48 boys joined S1 - around a third of the total intake of 140 pupils - after a campaign by parents who wanted their sons to be able to attend their local secondary, instead of having the inconvenience of travelling further afield. 

It was the end of an era for the Catholic school - but also for Scotland, where there are now no single-sex schools in the state sector.

Some of the girls’ observations about how things have changed since boys arrived are delivered with a smile and a roll of the eyes. But other comments are more pointed. 

Maureen McKenna says this reaction should come as no surprise. She stepped down as Glasgow’s director of education at the end of 2021 after 14 years in the job, but oversaw the process that led to the school’s change in status and was still in post when the first boys arrived.

No one likes change and these pupils, she says, and their parents, made a point of choosing an all-girls school, so it is unsurprising if they dislike the new co-ed status. It would be more noteworthy, says McKenna, if they were in favour.

“It’s quite understandable why they would feel a bit crabbit about it,” says McKenna. “The girls spoke eloquently throughout the campaign [to keep the school for girls only] and they did feel quite strongly that they did not want the school to become co-educational.”

Ultimately, the public decided the school’s future - but it was close, with 40 per cent voting for the status quo and 46 per cent voting for it to become co-ed.

Now, if it is single-sex education a family seeks in Scotland, they must look to the private sector - but even there, all-girls and all-boys schools are something of a dying breed.

There are just six single-sex mainstream private schools in Scotland and two of them - The Mary Erskine School and Stewart’s Melville College in Edinburgh - are something of a halfway house. The schools, although located on campuses a mile apart, operate as one and are led by the same principal. They have what is known as “a diamond structure”, with girls and boys educated together in the junior school and then separated for the bulk of secondary before they come back together for the final year. 

In England, the number of single-sex schools is also diminishing. Two decades ago, in 2002, according to government figures, there were 335 independent girls’ schools and 231 all-girls state schools in England. But when the latest figures were published this month, the number of independent all-girls schools had fallen by more than 100, to 232 schools. The number of all-girls state schools has also fallen over the period, but less rapidly, to 213.

That takes the total number of all-girls schools in England today to 445 which, while small, is a healthier figure than the number of boys’ schools - there are now just 362 boys’ schools in England, according to the latest figures (205 independent boys’ schools and 157 state primary and secondary all-boys schools).

A ‘niche product’ that’s worth ‘defending’

Dr Kevin Stannard, director of innovation and learning at the Girls’ Day School Trust, says all-girls schools are now “a niche product” that his organisation is “very interested in defending and justifying”. Most research, he says, shows that girls benefit from single-sex education and boys “probably benefit from co-education”. 

It’s a view Baroness Hale of Richmond famously posited in 2019, around the time she shot to fame for delivering a historic Supreme Court judgement on prime minister Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament. 

Hale is herself the product of an all-girls school and, when speaking at the Association of State Girls’ Schools’ (ASGS) annual leadership conference in the weeks after her judgement on the prime minister, she said that her father, who was a headmaster of a boys’ school, “was firmly of the view that single-sex education should be compulsory for girls but forbidden for boys”.

But of course - as she herself pointed out - “these are two inconsistent positions”.

Still, like Hale, Stannard is keen to make the case for all-girls schools, saying that co-ed has won out because of economies of scale and logistics, and because it benefits boys, but not because it is better for girls (although - as we will see later - there are researchers who would strongly dispute that).

He talks about boys dominating in the classroom and monopolising the teacher, who has to keep them motivated and occupied. This has the effect, he says, of girls being sidelined and not getting the same airtime as boys, but he also argues that girls behave differently in mixed schools. Sometimes they have to police the boys and, in mixed classes, he says, they are less willing to ask questions or to share answers, especially if they are unsure if they are right.

According to Stannard, girls in single-sex schools can also make uninhibited subject choices because the expectations of others weigh less heavily on their shoulders. 

To illustrate the point, he raises the recent comments of Katharine Birbalsingh - the head of Michaela Community School in north-west London and the UK government’s social mobility commissioner - who caused uproar in April when she told the MPs on the Science and Technology Committee that girls are less likely to choose physics A level because it involves “hard maths”. 

He says he was also struck by US research that found girls were much more likely to take part in extracurricular activities - but boys were more likely to lead them. Boys “elbow their way to the top” and, as a consequence, girls miss out.

And then there is Everyone’s Invited. 

“The argument is that we are passé, that life is co-ed, and that we are trying to bubblewrap the world, but that argument has gone quiet since Everyone’s Invited,” says Stannard.

Everyone’s Invited is the anti-rape movement focused on “exposing rape culture through conversation, education and support”. It encourages victims to share their stories anonymously online and, as a result, it has uncovered the scale of sexual harassment, abuse and assault in UK schools. 

This led to a June 2021 Ofsted review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges, which found that sexual harassment and online sexual abuse are such a routine part of their daily lives that pupils do not see any point in challenging or reporting it, and that girls suffer disproportionately.

For example, 92 per cent of girls and 74 per cent of boys said sexist name-calling happens a “lot or sometimes to them or their peers”.  

The report also found that “some teachers and leaders underestimated the scale of the problem”.

Stannard believes these findings are important when we consider how we educate our children. 

“We are not anywhere near gender equality,” he argues. “We know that from the salaries that males and females earn and the number in management and leadership posts. In every aspect of life, there is still a lot of asymmetry and it’s becoming clearer that the purpose of the surviving single-sex schools is not to bubble wrap the world but to prepare girls for the world.”

It is interesting to note, however, the response of Jessica Ringrose, a professor of the sociology of gender and education at UCL Institute of Education, when asked if it is possible to protect girls from harassment by sending them to single-sex schools.

She was asked this question last year when the BBC Radio 4 Bringing Up Britain series explored single-sex education in one of its programmes. Her research had shown that the girls in elite girls’ schools were receiving just as many unsolicited explicit pictures online “as any other girl in any other school”. 

She added: “This idea that you are going to have a safe environment completely protected is completely false in a digital environment.”

Teachers who have experience of both single sex and co-educational schooling obviously have different views on this issue, and others raised above. Some say that the younger girls seem older because they are more confident and self-assured, but the older girls seem younger because they can be silly without worrying what others - that is, boys - think.

‘It’s becoming clearer that the purpose of the surviving single-sex schools is not to bubble wrap the world but to prepare girls for the world’

Some favour all-girls education for conservative and religious reasons, but others value them for the progressive reasons that Stannard cites. 

Of course, these views on single-sex education are increasingly having to be viewed within a culture in which gender identity is more fluid. In co-educational schools, transgender and non-binary students are challenging the way education is organised and headteachers are saying that more guidance is desperately needed, so schools are legally and pastorally supporting all pupils (England’s Department for Education is drawing up guidelines but, at the time of writing, the publication date is unknown). In single-sex education, this situation is even more complex. 

The campaigners who wanted Notre Dame to change to a co-educational school put forward the argument that it would make the school more inclusive, including to transgender and non-binary pupils. In reality, McKenna says, the school had already successfully supported transgender pupils and there was “never any question of these young people leaving”. However, it was noted that making the school co-educational could make “gender transition less challenging” and provide “the potential to form a peer group for all gender choices”.

Stannard says that inclusion is “a major focus” in all-girls schools and “it’s notable that pupils who identify as boys or non-binary don’t leave to go to co-ed schools”, because they find that the single-sex setting offers “an extremely supportive environment and safe space for them”.

Related features:

• Trans and non-binary students: legal issues in Scotland
• Trans students: the legal risks for schools in England

The case against single-sex schooling

In research times, there is indeed a lot of evidence in support of single-sex schooling, as Stannard laid out earlier. But there is also a lot against it, too. 

McKenna says she remained determinedly neutral throughout the consultation process on whether the school’s future should be single-sex or co-ed. Now, however, she is prepared to be more frank in her views. 

“If our role is to prepare young people for civic society, then my fundamental belief is in the comprehensive education system and I don’t want selection in any way. I want children to go to their local school and have that broad and blended education. That is what gives them that lived experience that allows them to relate to others and understand the issues they face. You do not need to have a single-sex school to create opportunities for girls to feel as positive and as strong as possible, and have as much opportunity as possible to excel.”

Any argument that girls attain better if they are educated separately is given short shrift by McKenna. 

A paper she wrote during the consultation on the future of Notre Dame High says that “there is no compelling evidence around attainment in co-educational schools, as opposed to single-gender schools, or vice versa”. 

By and large, Professor Alan Smithers agrees. Smithers is director of the University of Buckingham Centre for Education and Employment Research (CEER) and has, over the course of a long career in education research, investigated the impact of single-sex schools on attainment.

In 2006 he co-wrote a paper for the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), a body representing many well-known independent schools, attempting “to make sense of the seemingly confusing and contradictory information in one of the most researched topics in education”.

While it might seem plausible that boys are a more dominant presence in class and that, therefore, girls attain better if they are educated separately, Smithers says it is not possible “to stand it up” as an argument.

Girls’ schools perform better, he says, because girls generally attain more highly than boys wherever they are.

“In England - and I would guess it is the same in the equivalent exams in Scotland - girls do much better in exams at age 16. So, if you have a school with more girls in it, overall the results are better.”

Smithers says it is not possible to make blanket generalisations that single-sex schools are better for educational achievement. However, he also sees no evidence to support claims that co-ed schools are better for social development because “life is co-educational and it’s good to learn how to relate to the other sex”. The research, he says, simply does not bear this out.

His 2006 paper - written with CEER deputy director Dr Pamela Robinson - concluded: “There are excellent single-sex schools and excellent co-educational schools. Our conclusion is that they are excellent for reasons other than that they separate, or bring together, the sexes for their education.”

A 2002 paper from the National Foundation for Educational Research, however, concluded that girls’ schools helped counter traditional sex stereotyping when it came to subject choice and that girls in single-sex comprehensive schools performed better than those in mixed comprehensives. But the paper also cautioned that this higher attainment could be explained “by factors which we were not able to include in the analysis”. 

Data on student ethnicity was not included but the paper said this could be important because Asian families “often choose to send their daughters to single-sex schools, and Asian girls tend to obtain particularly good examination results”.

The paper said another factor influencing attainment - but not taken into consideration - could be parental engagement. It said single-sex schools were often “deliberately chosen by parents who are informed and interested in their children’s education”.

Notre Dame High in Glasgow is described by McKenna as a high-performing school; she believes much of this is down to high levels of parental engagement.

Yet, Smithers would like to see all-girls schools remain so that parents who strongly favour single-sex schools - perhaps for cultural or religious reasons, or just because of their child’s “personal characteristics” - have the option to send their children there. 

During the consultation process, it was acknowledged that making Notre Dame High co-educational could “impact on choices available for some faith groups”, because a high percentage of requests to attend the school came from black and minority ethnic young people. When Tes Scotland visited Notre Dame High in 2017, the religion of pupils was not recorded but 28 per cent of the girls reported their ethnic background as Asian Pakistani.

As a single-sex school, the catchment was certainly wide: it previously drew pupils from 53 primary schools. Now, as a co-ed school, that has reduced to 35 primary schools, with three associated primary schools taking priority. The school says this has a lot of benefits for the families who get their children into the school: Notre Dame head Rosemary Martin says staff now have a better chance of getting to know pupils before they arrive.

Martin, who has worked at Notre Dame for more than 20 years and as headteacher for almost eight, says: “Transition was always difficult for us because the young people came from so many different primary schools, so being able to work closely with our own associated primaries is really supporting that transition process and the exchange of knowledge about young people.”

The move towards co-ed: a ‘different energy’

The knock-on effect, however, is that the school - which had previously been able to accept all placing requests for children to attend from outside its catchment area - has had to refuse 126 placing requests for next year. The school has around 750 pupils and, next year, that is expected to rise to around 800, which means it will be nearing capacity.

While boys made up around a third of the first S1 intake, next year it will be closer to half. 

Eventually, the school will be completely mixed. Depute head Liz Henderson - who is responsible for transitions - says that, so far, the boys have brought “a different energy to the school”.

“They seem to take up more space because their interactions are more physical than young women, who often want to talk in wee corners.”

But Henderson says that, so far, they do not live up to stereotypical images of the adolescent male. Boys have taken well, for example, to the school’s restorative approach to behaviour management, which boils down to “when things go wrong, we talk about it”.

“When you give the boys the chance, they are very articulate about their thoughts and feelings,” says Henderson. 

“The girls might say they are this or that, because they feel [boys] have infringed on their all-girls school, but they are lovely, emotional, thoughtful young men.”

Initially, Martin says, there were some very visible differences in the way the boys acted. There would be copious timetables dropped in the corridors, for example, and blazers and bags abandoned in the playground: “We had never really experienced that before.”

The bigger picture for Martin, however, is that, generally, boys and girls alike “are all just young people who come to school every day, go to class, work hard and form relationships with each other and their teachers - and do it very successfully”.

Martin says the early part of the school’s transition to co-ed has gone smoothly, largely because of all the preparation put in place by the staff, although some things have taken a bit of getting used to. One of the trickiest aspects has been using gender-neutral turns of phrase: getting pupils’ attention with “right, girls...” or “now, girls...” is a habit they have had to break.

‘The boys seem to take up more space because their interactions are more physical than young women, who often want to talk in wee corners’

Boys, of course, remain very much in the minority at Notre Dame. 

“There are only roughly 50 boys in the whole school, so it hasn’t been a case of going [instantly] from single-sex to co-ed,” says principal maths teacher Mark Higgins, who adds that the “gradual transition starting with S1” has made the change “smoother”.

Notre Dame teachers are keen to retain what they see as a big strength of the school. Its caring and nurturing ethos, says home economics teacher Clare Bancewicz, has long counteracted the “natural insecurities of adolescence” that “can dampen girls’ ambition”.

To ease the return to school and the recovery from the pandemic, the school introduced more than 50 clubs this year, from a David Bowie appreciation society to a Pokémon lunchtime club. Martin says considering what boys need and want has been part of that. There is also a school football team now - the school had a rugby team - but with the arrival of the boys, there has been more demand for football. 

The key change to the curriculum, meanwhile, is to be an expansion of the technical department. It already offered disciplines such as graphic communication, but is to expand to encompass practical skills with wood, metal and plastic.

A new school uniform was also considered to help usher in the new era. The traditional Notre Dame uniform is brown and there were some qualms about whether trousers in that hue would be a good look. Ultimately, though, tradition won out over style consideration - brown trousers it is.

And what has the first year been like for these male pioneers? 

Some boys were a bit scared about joining the school. Ahmad says: “At the start, I thought it would be really awkward and there would be loads of girls, and I kind of thought that would get me made fun of”, but “as soon as I came, everyone was really nice - I didn’t feel like I wasn‘t meant to be there.”

Daniel - whose sister already attended Notre Dame - was excited to have a different experience and it has been “fun”, although initially “quite crazy”.

“There were just lots of questions being asked by older girls, like ‘why are you joining the school?’ - it was like a game of 20 questions with every student in the school, pretty much. So, there were a lot more curious people and it was quite chaotic, but it’s calmed down a bit now.”

Despite the reservations of some of the girls, they are now getting used to the new way of schooling. The consensus among older girls seems to be that because the boys are in S1 - and with Covid meaning less mixing among the year groups - it is not impinging too much on day-to-day life.

As one girl puts it: “I didn’t really mind the boys coming here. They weren’t coming into our year group, so it didn’t really impact any of us.”

And the girls in S1? They are more accepting of their male counterparts - after all, they’ve never known anything different. In just a few years, that will be the case for every state-school pupil in Scotland.

Emma Seith is a senior reporter at Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith

More long reads from Tes Scotland:

• Will reducing teacher contact time prove too difficult?

• The end of the primary head? A warning from Scotland

• Two years of Covid: the view from inside schools

• The schools making ‘impossible’ timetable change a reality

• The deal that tried to transform teaching - and almost did