Clarissa Farr

Clarissa Farr was high mistress of St Paul’s Girls’ School and is author of The Making of Us: Why School Matters. She is former chairman of the Girls’ Schools Association and a governor of Winchester College.

Mixed blessing: do single-sex schools have a future?

If you were starting with a blank screen to design an education system today, it seems unlikely that you would think of creating single-sex schools, any more than you would single-sex professions or single-sex restaurants. Education for life is something we do together, like working or eating. Their existence is explained by the fact that