Single-Sex Schools: Impacts on Teenage Girls

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Single-Sex Schools: Impacts on Teenage Girls In America, the numbers of single sex public schools are increasing each year from 2 to 49 in the years 1995 to 2008 respectively (Jackson, 2010, p.227). Furthermore, the National Association for Single Sex Public Education (NASSPE) reports that for the year 2011 to 2012, over 506 public schools in the United States are offering single gender education opportunities, approximately 390 of which are co-educational schools offering single-sex classrooms v However, there are no well-developed studies showing that single sex secondary education actually improves the academic performance of teenage girls (Halpern et al., 2011). On the other hand, there are conclusive studies showing that sex segregation increases conflicts of gender roles and the possibility of developing eating disorders for girls in secondary schools. Furthermore, according to Pemela Robinson and Alan Simithers (1999), professors from the education department of University of Liverpool, among alumni from single sex institutions interviewed in their study, only one-third of them said they would send their own children to a single sex secondary school. Meanwhile, almost all alumni of typical mixed-sex schools said they would gladly enroll their children in a mixed sex secondary school. This shows that alumni who have first hand experience with single sex education, for one reason or another largely would not want their own children to be schooled in a single sex school. Therefore, single sex secondary education seems to have a detrimental impact on the general wellbeing of teenage girls in comparison to coeducational secondary schools. In short, school types do not significantly affect teenage girls’ performance, while at the same time single sex secondary schools increase institutional sexism and the chances of developing eating disorders. First, the issue

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