It was only when listening to Radio 4’s In Living Memory that I realised what a minority within a minority are women of my age who went to university after secondary education in a coeducational-school. Historical precedent, which meant the great majority of English secondary schools were single sex, was only abandoned, almost by accident, with comprehensivisation in the late 1960s.
By that time of course we had had universal secondary education for a scant quarter of a century, thanks to the Butler Education Act of 1944; before then, unless your parents could pay or you were lucky enough to win a scholarship, you stayed at the local elementary school & left at 14, possibly for further education in practical skills (art or mechanics or typing) at a local college.
When I think about it I cannot recall any non-fee-paying schools with which we had any contacts (such as in inter-school sports matches) which were not co-educational, completely against the national norm. My guess is that was because of the rural nature of the county – all schools were small & would have been completely unviable unless they catered to both boys & girls.
It would have been very different in the larger towns & cities, where ancient grammar schools for poor boys would have been supplemented from the late C19th by pioneering schools for girls.
The issue of whether single sex education produces better results than one which mixes delicate girls with rough boys (especially during the sensitive years of adolescence) is still a live one today. In truth, as with most things, I expect that it depends on the child. Some, like me, hate the idea of an all-girls school with only female teachers, so I can only be grateful for the accident of fate which meant that the whole of my education took place alongside boys.
It is only the children of our brains — ideas, ideals, opinions — which change so pitifully in a few short weeks that we may not even regard them with that tender regret wherewith we view the panoply of infancy, but instinctively draw back, and, if conscience did not stand sternly sponsor for them, would deny them for our own.
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