Why is education for girls important?

One of the aims of global education is to improve the lives of all who are touched by greater and wider learning. For many this brings the chance of more fulfilled lives and can open opportunity for greater prosperity. In the view of the UN this means improving access to education, world over, for women and girls. This has been the aim of the foundation of the Company of Mary Our Lady for over 400 years, ever since their foundress in Bordeaux in the late sixteenth century realised that to educate society meant educating mothers, sisters and aunts, as that would have the biggest influence over the development of families, and create an educated culture for children to grow into. Opportunities for work come from academic and vocational studies. Appreciation and understanding of others comes from engagement with literature and written materials that extend far beyond personal experience. Moral education is enhanced by understanding the rights of all to take an equal place in society, including women.

The aim of this week’s blog isn’t to repeat a whole set of points regarding single sex education (see my blog from Thursday 17 January 2013) but in considering the rights of women to be educated I thought it worth sharing a further thought from some literature I came across this week: Jacqueline Granleese writes about girls educated in both single sex and co-educational schools in Northern Ireland. She discovered through her research that girls’ attainment and achievement is strongly affected by their self-image. She discovered that within single-sex settings girls’ view of their own abilities and success are influenced by how they behave and attain more than how they look or perceive that they are being viewed, by others, whereas girls in co-ed settings are more likely to base their sense of self on how they look and how their appearance may be judged. Although this seems a small difference, the impact on attainment and studies can be quiet dramatic. Students’ view of themselves quickly extends to their expectations and to their own engagement with the environment in which they are taught. It seems fatuous to think pretty girls, or at least those who seem attractive to certain boys, do better, but that in essence is what girls can quickly come to believe and it deeply affects their own self-esteem and therefore their progress, regardless of their abilities (we are talking about teenagers here…).

Professor Chris Holligan points out that this has a knock on effect to the perception that certain subjects in a co-ed school take on the subconscious subtext that they are for boys (physics and mathematics) or for girls (languages and creative subjects) and become quickly stigmatised. Girls in these settings become wary that they will appear more masculine by choosing technical or science subjects. Dr Leonard Sax also flags up the point that for many adolescents the presence in the classrooms of the opposite sex causes a distraction that makes full attention difficult, especially in view of the idea that a sense of self-worth can be related to physical appearance rather than to academic success.

In the light of the struggle to educate women worldwide, and in order to create more equable societies it seems incongruous that positive discrimination is what is needed here in the UK to enable women to have the equality they require in education settings. However for many, it does seem that positive single sex discrimination is the most effective way to educate young women for the future.