CO EDUCATION has little impact on the performance of boys and girls in the Leaving Certificate, a new study has found.
Coeducation and Gender Equality, carried out by the Economic and Social Research Institute, does not support previous international and Irish studies which showed that girls suffered in a coeducational setting.
But the ESRI finds that at Junior Cert girls in single sex schools do slightly better than girls in co ed schools.
The impact of co education is strongest among lower ability pupils, where boys do better and girls slightly worse than their counterparts in single sex schools.
The Minister for Education, who presented the report yesterday, welcomed its publication but was concerned at some of the findings. Ms Breathnach said her Department would take action on several issues raised by the study.
Co education clearly has a negative effect on girls performance in Junior Cert maths, and on the performance of girls and boys in Leaving Cert maths. This pattern may be repeated in other science subjects, but these were not looked at.
The study - involving more than 10,000 students in 116 schools - also finds "disturbingly" high levels of stress among exam students.
More than 37 per cent of Leaving Cert boys and 57 per cent of girls reported feeling "constantly under strain".
Over 20 per cent of boys and 40 per cent of girls said they lost much sleep through worry.
Although co education is popular with boys and girls, its benefits for their social and personal development appear small. Attending a co ed school makes boys more self critical, with less confidence in their academic abilities, less feeling of control over their lives and more negative evaluations of their appearances than among boys in single sex schools.
In contrast, girls have less confidence, lower sense of control and more negative views of their appearance than boys no matter what school they attend.
But girls in co ed schools were three times more likely to feel they had good relationships with the opposite sex than girls in single sex schools.
Both boys and girls in co education said they were more self confident and better equipped to make friends.
The study was drawn up over two years by four ESRI researchers under Prof Damian Hannan.
In a complex analysis of exam results, the study finds girls generally outperform boys at Junior Cert level. The gap narrows at Leaving Cert, yet boys do not "catch up" as much as previously thought.
Single sex schools tend to be more selective in their intake but co ed schools are more likely to stream pupils by academic ability.
The report says the State should do more to facilitate equal opportunities for all children by discouraging schools from selective intake. Mixed ability classes should be favoured over streaming, and gender equity policies developed to encourage a greater take up by boys and girls of nontraditional subjects.
Referring to the under performance of some pupils and the high stress levels found, the report calls for a "re evaluation" of the exam system.
