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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > Mixed sixth
Mixed sixth  [message #55961] Sat, 14 March 2009 13:32 Go to previous message
NW is currently offline  NW

On fire!
Location: Worcester, England
Registered: January 2005
Messages: 1562



My old school has recently e-mailed all the Old Boys (OW's), as well as all current pupils, parents, staff, to say that it is in the process of deciding to take girls in the Sixth Form*, after some 500 years of being a single-sex school. The School invited comments on this.

(*the last two years of school, before college / university)

It's something I'm pretty much in favour of: I think the artificial segregation of the sexes does little good for the boys. However, I do have some concerns about the transition period ...

It seems to me that, as a gay adolescent in the early 1970s, I would probably have found that it gave added weight to the pressures of heterosexual conformity. However my experience of school is long ago, and things have changed, and the school is no longer quite as inept at pastoral care as it was in my day.

So, would it be appropriate for me to comment on the proposal, suggesting that the School needs to pay particular attention to their gay / bisexual pupils (and, in due course, lesbian), and ensure that it is seen as a "safe space". Decent anti-bullying policies, encouraging gay staff to be out, checking that the PHSE curriculum is up to snuff, that invited speakers at careers events who are out and gay feel able to refer to that fact ... that kind of thing ?

Any how did any of us who attended "mixed" (co-ed) schools in the sixth form find it? Or any who taught in such establishments?


"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
 
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