Boys can learn all to early that ‘it’s cool to be a fool’ when they are taught together with girls, according the Chief Executive of the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS), David Hanson, quoting recent research featured in a BBC documentary about young children at boarding schools in the UK. He suggested that boys in single-sex environments might develop more, rather than less, naturally.
At the recent annual IAPS conference Hanson also underlined the importance of sport and other outdoor activities, another reason why parents may choose single-sex schools for their sons. Many parents express concern that in maintained schools their child is never “off the floor or out of a chair”.
Children should be encouraged to be active during the school day, he said. They need that, it is good for them.
Mr Hanson said perceived wisdom had been that boys ought to go to co-educational schools and girls should be educated in girls-only environments, even if that would have posed problems if everyone had acted in that way!
“Now it’s the opposite; boys are going to single sex schools because their parents think they will do better there.”
Catholic boarding schools 