AMC Blog - Lycée Mona Ozouf de Ploërmel

My name is Abyss, I am 16 years old and I am a student from Mona Ozouf highschool. I want to share about the penfriend project that we did in our AMC group between Mona Ozouf Highschool and an Australian school named Pymble Ladies’ College.

Each student has a penfriend in my class and my penfriend’s name is Annika. At the beginning, we had to introduce ourselves. After that, we both asked questions to each other, about our culture and what we prefer in each other's country.

Pymble Ladies College is a girls’ school and it is composed of 4 schools: Junior, Middle, Upper and Senior school. Our penfriends are in the Upper school, which means that they are between 13 and 14 years old. They are in Year 9, which is the equivalent of 3e in France.

To stay on the same theme, with my AMC class we worked on the question: « Are single-sex schools better for girls? » with an article from abc.net.au, an Australian website.

The authors of this article says that, in single-sex education, boys and girls are more likely to study sciences.

Furthermore, when they are in a single-sex school, girls become more confident and have better outcomes. Indeed, Harvard studies show that girl students who are not in a co-ed school have an increase of 7 to 10 % in their maths grades.

Moreover, there is less bullying in single-sex schools than in co-ed schools. In 2020, studies in Australia and New Zealand have shown the difference between bullying in co-ed schools and single-sex schools. An average of 79 % of girls who are in single-sex schools never or almost never experience bullying compared to 71 % in co-ed schools.

There are other advantages to go to a single-sex school, since these schools favour social and emotional well-being.

However, the positive effects of single-sex schools are quite often caused by privileged backgrounds, like a wealthy family and/or higher educated parents…

In my opinion, single-sex schools are a nice idea but I think it still has two bad aspects. Indeed, if I went to one of these schools, I would develop my self-confidence more easily, I would be less afraid of doing what I really want to do. However, when I would grow up, I might be uncomfortable with men in everyday life, because I would never have had the experience of rubbing shoulders with boys before going into professional life. Additionally, in my opinion, single-sex schools encourage sexism because I think when girls are separate from boys, they might try to do better than boys in many fields, and boys might try to do the same too, if they see that girls are better. So, it would create a loop. And it doesn’t make sense for me to divide people by their biological sex. Just because you are a girl so you have to go to a single-sex school for your well-being and to be the best version of you? I don’t think it’s fair. And it’s the same for boys.

In France we do have single-sex schools as well. The differences to co-ed schools appear to be the same as in Australia, according to the research I found on the subject. For example, in single-sex schools, girls are more united and there is less competition between them or bullying too because there are no boys. Besides, girls are more comfortable in class and sport and they are more likely to step up and speak out. They are more confident, and being in a single-sex school is like being in a safe place for them.