Living, learning together : exploring children’s attitude towards co-education in the Secondary

Abstract

“Co-education advocates and researchers… report that segregating students by gender - be it via entire schools or simply classrooms - can lead to greater gender discrimination and make it harder for students to deal with the other sex later in life” (Novotney, 2011). This study is timely, since the introduction of co-education within the Maltese state secondary school sector is quite a recent one. The primary aim of this study is to explore the views, concerns and expectations of Year 6 students in Gozo on the prospect of co-education in state secondary schools. The study was carried out among 200 Year 6 children (103 boys and 97 girls) from eleven schools in the Gozo College. The main tool for this quantitative study was a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire focused on the views, concerns and expectations that Year 6 children may have about the prospect of co-education in the secondary. Results showed that the majority of students were looking forward to attend a co-educational secondary school. Moreover, they felt that it was beneficial for them to remain in a co-educational setting because it would not only help them academically but also socially. This study has also shown that there were no any major gender differences in student responses. Nevertheless, boys were more likely to have doubts about going to a co-educational secondary school than girls. Both genders agreed on the fact that co-education will prepare them to work productively together not only in school but later on in life.