Should Ontario Fund All-Boys and All-Girls Schools Again?

Right now Canadians don't have a choice, unless they can afford to pay $thousands of dollars for tuition, they must send their children to a publicly funded coeducation school. But some boys and some girls don't do very well in mixed gender settings.



In Oct 2009, Chris Spence of the Toronto District School Board called for 'boy friendly' classrooms to address a growing decline in male academics. The controversial request made headlines all over Canada.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty immediately came out in support of the proposal in hopes of raising test scores and cutting the dropout rates. McGuinty is quoted as saying, "... our boys are not doing as well as our girls when it comes to reading and behavioural challenges". This from Orato: Mixed vs Single Gender Education Jan 29th 2010. The article goes on to detail advantages of single gender education models.

What do you think? Should Ontario bring back all boys and all girls schools?

The TCDSB already has a few all-boys/girls schools. I don't know if they're statistically better but I'd be wary to use them as examples of the system 'working' even if they do seem to work because they are, for many, desirable magnet schools, and so there is no way to distinguish the gender differences from the influence of parents eager to send their kids there. The only way to properly compare single gender vs mixed schools is to compare an entirely single gender school board to an entirely mixed school board - and even then you have to weigh socio-economic/ethnic/religious influences.

The single gender schools for the Catholic board tend to be older high schools in more affluent neighbourhoods with more affluent student populations. That would really, really skew the results. That said, studies do tend to show that both boys and girls perform better academically in single gender schools.

What studies show the trend that single gender schools (the affluent ones you mentioned?) perform better academically?