A new study has found boys at single-sex schools leave with higher qualifications than those at co-educational skills. Photo / Getty Images
A new study has found boys at single-sex schools leave with higher qualifications than those at co-educational skills. Photo / Getty Images
Boys at single-sex schools tend to leave school with higher qualifications than their counterparts at co-educational schools, a new study has found.
The findings contradict the traditionally-held belief that boys do better in co-educational schools while girls fare better in single-sex settings.
The new study, released this afternoon at theInternational Boys’ School Conference held at Westlake Boys’ High School, compares the highest qualification all boys in New Zealand left school with between 2017 and 2021. The report was commissioned by the Association of Boys’ Schools of New Zealand.
Overall, the data showed almost half of boys at single-sex schools left with University Entrance, compared to 30 per cent of boys at co-educational schools.
Only 6.3 per cent of boys at single-sex schools left schools with no qualification, compared to 14.3 per cent of boys at co-educational schools.
Westlake Boys’ High School principal and chairman of the Association of Boys’ Schools in New Zealand, David Ferguson, said the findings backed up two previous studies they had commissioned in New Zealand since 2010.
“Some people might not necessarily expect this. Twelve years is a long time and for there to be no real exceptions at all, we’ve got some real validity in that,” he said.
Ferguson said there was nowhere else in the world measuring the same thing because it was not always easy to collate a full data set.
Broken down by year, the trends remained relatively steady - although the report noted a slight narrowing of the achievement rate between the school types in each qualification level.
However, given the change was so slight, the author could not be sure whether the “trend was a new occurrence or caused by a random fluctuation”.
Broken down by decile, students at single-sex schools still performed better on average than their counterparts in each decile range.
Westlake Boys' High School headmaster David Ferguson. Photo / Supplied.
The difference in the proportion of students who gained University Entrance was 15-20 per cent higher for students at single-sex students across all ethnicities.
The difference in the percentage of students who did not leave co-educational schools with any qualification was much higher among Māori and Pacific students, suggesting they may benefit the most from a single-sex setting.
Westlake Boys’ High School associate principal Becky O’Gram said the fact that decile, ethnicity and individual years made no difference to the outcome backed up the findings.
“I think that the most standout thing is that, whichever way you cut the data, it shows that the boys are achieving at higher rates in boys’ schools than they are in co-ed schools,” O’Gram said.
The report concluded school leavers had higher achievement rates at single-sex schools but cautioned there was not enough evidence to say the type of schooling was the cause.
“For example, a reputation for excellence may cause aspirational students to tend towards single-sex schools - this data cannot tell,” the report said.
Ferguson said a survey they commissioned five years ago said the “secret source of high-performance culture in boys’ schools were things like aspiration, brotherhood, a culture of high challenge and support and the feeling of belonging”.
