University of Limerick study reveals if students attending single-sex schools have advantage

A RESEARCHER at University of Limerick has been investigating to see if there is any advantage for students who attend single-sex schools.

The major new study carried out by Kemmy Business School economics lecturer Dr Darragh Flannery and Prof José Clavel of University of Murcia in Spain has interviewed nearly 5,000 15-year-old Irish students to examine the association between attending a single-sex school and mathematics, reading and science literacy performance for boys and girls respectively.

And their paper - published in the British Educational Research Journal - reveals that there is no advantage to only studying alongside students of the same gender.

Dr Flannery said: "The topic of single-sex versus mixed-sex schooling continues to be a source of debate within education policy in many countries, including Ireland. However, there is limited evidence around the relationship between attending a single-sex school and academic performance."

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He pointed out that relative to other countries, there is a higher proportion of post-primary students attending single-sex schools.

"For this reason," he added, "the Irish educational system provides an interesting setting for exploring the outcomes of single-sex schooling.”

The analysis shows significant raw gaps in reading, science, and maths performance with pupils in single-sex schools performing better than those in mixed-schools.

However, once the researchers applied a range of individual and school level factors such as the economic background of the student, the school student-staff ratio, the quality of teaching material available to the school and whether or not the school is disadvantaged, these gaps did not present as statistically significant.

It reveals, on average, that there is no difference in maths, science or reading performance for 15-year-olds after adjusting for the background of the student and other school-level factors and this result was found for both boys and girls.

"Our analysis shows no evidence of an academic advantage to attending a single sex school for boys or girls in Ireland," Dr Flannery confirmed.