Californian Professor Diane Halpern, a 30-year veteran in sex, gender and cognition studies, says there is no research to show that boys and girls learn differently. 

She points to an analysis of 1.6 million students of all ages from 21 nations that failed to find any advantage of single-sex education. 

The 2014 study, co-authored by Janet Hyde of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, found that many of the claims made by advocates of single-sex schooling were unsubstantiated. 

Any evidence of better academic performance at single-sex schools, Professor Halpern says, can be attributed to more extracurricular activities and a student body whose parents are generally more affluent and well-educated.

Attending single-sex schools could instead be disadvantageous for children and teenagers, with evidence to show segregation caused people to develop strong stereotypes and in-group bias.

 “In fact, children are going to live in a world that’s far more diverse than ever before – they are going to have to interact with females and males, they are going to have to understand that sometimes the girls are going to outscore the boys and that sometimes the boys will outscore the girls. 

“After graduation, virtually everyone will work for and with females and males – students need to learn mutual respect and the social skills of interacting. 

“We don’t have sex-segregated workplaces so why would we have sex-segregated schools?”