Introduction

Protagonists of single-sex education, especially women, used to continue the argument by saying that boys and girls would not work well in the same classroom because each sex would be distracted by the other. Almost all the research analysed is concerned with the comparison between mixed and single-sex grammar schools, not through any wish to exclude other secondary schools, but because there is little reliable research concerned with these other types. The chief queries which arise in the generalization of the findings are first, the effect of the lower social class of the pupils in such schools, accompanied possibly by some changes in the relationship between the sexes, and second, the lower level of intelligence and academic ability in them which might reduce the pupils' interest in academic work, and therefore make the pupils more easily distracted by the presence of the opposite sex.