The Abbey is a member of the Girls' Schools Association which is a group of independent schools who specialise in girls' education. The GSA has developed a website mydaughter.co.uk which is full of useful advice on raising girls.
For a long time simmering under the surface of educational debate, the issue of single sex education has once again come to the boil with the publication of new reports showing the value of separating boys and girls in education. A study by the Department for Education and Skills shows that the proportion of A grades achieved at A-level in all-girls independent schools is on average 10% higher than that of girls in co-educational independent schools in a significant number of subjects.
Those of us who are parents of children of both sexes are only too aware of the sense of amazement that the same two parents can produce beings who are so vastly different. Boys and girls mature at different rates. For a large part of their school careers, girls are much more advanced than boys of the same chronological age. Girls may be threatened by the boys' very physical approach to life but boys are threatened by the girls' articulateness and, later, sophistication.
Unlike co-educational schools which unwittingly enforce gender steretoypes, single sex schools, such as The Abbey, encourage their students to break through this stereotype and choose those subjects where their talents and abilities lie, rather than those subjects which they feel they are expected to study. This has been reflected at The Abbey as the most popular A-level subjects are maths and the sciences.
Equally, the broad extra-curricular programme offers the girls the opportunity to enjoy Business Enterprise, judo, cricket and rock-climbing as well as cookery and ballet.
Later on in life girls from single sex schools go on to earn more than those from co-educational schools, due partly no doubt to their greater confidence in salary negotiations.
For the vast majority of girls, a single sex environment in the classroom provides a safe haven in which they have the space and freedom to become the people they want to be. As a day school, girls at The Abbey then have plenty of time to socialise with boys and indeed the school organises both social and extra-curricular events with neighbouring boys' schools.
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