Credit: This story was first seen on the Oxford Times
Girls are more likely to enjoy and excel at sport if they attend a single-sex school, a top Oxford headteacher has said, the Oxford Times reports.
Girls’s School Association (GSA) president Caroline Jordan told the organisation’s conference at Rhodes House yesterday that female students had more confidence to take part when they did not feel they had to ‘impress’ boys.
Headington School headmistress Ms Jordan told delegates that private schools should be proud rather than ‘embarrassed’ by the number of Olympic athletes they have produced.
She said: “Certainly we do see, time and time again, how girls’ engagement in team sports is more apparent in girls’ schools than it is in co-educational schools. With no boys around to ‘impress’, I have always found that girls are far more likely to enjoy running around for an hour at lunchtime on the sports pitch than they might be in a co-ed environment.”
Ms Jordan also told the conference that schools were now facing the challenge of trying to deal with the potential impact of Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory in the United States presidential election earlier this month.
She said: “Whatever your political leanings I doubt that many of you predicted both Brexit in the UK and the Trump victory in the US. The challenge we now face is to navigate the uncertainty and understand the potential impact on our pupils. Already many of us are reporting a real fear amongst our overseas parents and friends, mystified by a seemingly newly xenophobic Britain that they don’t recognise or understand. Whatever happens with our country’s plans for Brexit I believe we must maintain – and indeed amplify – our global outlook.”