Before I launch into the many merits of mixed education, let's get the worst bits out of the way: swimming lessons, for pubescent schoolgirls, are a misery whose memory should be buried in a deep subconscious recess never to be retrieved, along with school rice pudding and, if I'm being honest, having to get out of bed and attend lessons in the first place.
Apart from these small points, only the first of which would have been less of a strain at a single-sex school, the idea of going to anything other than a school where girls and boys work and play together unsegregated – as in the real world – seems a really odd concept to me.
Of course many of the highest achieving schools across the country are single-sex, but these schools are also the most expensive. I'm not convinced anyone has satisfactorily pulled apart how many of the A-grades and Oxbridge places there can be attributed to separating out the sexes, and how many to top-flight teachers and bottomless resources such as extra coaching hours and well kitted out science labs.
Science lessons have been singled out for scrutiny in the renewed debate about whether the sexes should be schooled together. Co-education has been the trend for the past 40 years, over which time the number of single-sex state schools has plummeted from 2,500 to just 400, but the new Schools minister, Sarah McCarthy Fry, fears this might not be the best way forward for our children. Why not? Because girls are put off by of the "intimidating" presence of boys in the classroom, and this could be responsible for the lack of interest in science and engineering among girls. Intimidating? At my school, if we girls had sat quietly, too scared to put our hands up because the boys in the row behind might snigger, the result would have been deathly silence. Far from hogging all the teacher time, most of the boys in my class sat mute until the sixth form, when they finally decided what they were interested in and got on with it.
McCarthy-Fry thinks science should be made more "girl-friendly". How so? By making those safety specs in more face-flattering shapes and studding the lab coats with pink rhinestones? One idea is to teach girls science separately, even at co-ed schools. Really, if they're trying to find ways to jazz up science, taking the boys out of the classroom isn't the answer. Who else is going to help us dissect a rat's sexual organs and sterilise that stack of Petri dishes?
The shortcomings of a single-sex school would have been evident with far more frequency than twice-weekly science classes. Who to flirt with on the bus? Would we have had to dress up as men and embrace each other in school plays, and place ads in the post office for boys to make up the numbers at parties?
The main argument for single-sex schooling is that boys and girls learn differently, so should be taught differently. Eureka! Indeed: there are some well established differences between the sexes. Was this not the case when mixing it up was first mooted? Forty years of co-education, and what have we learnt? That boys prefer adventure books and girls Jane Austen, and so to serve both well we must school them separately.
Wouldn't it be preferable to force them all to read a bit of each, and make their own minds up later? The idea of sending boys out into the world expecting to find Middle Earth, with all the girls rushing around intent on marrying into money doesn't sound like a plan for 21st-century education to me. I don't remember the girls feeling especially disenfranchised by the presence of boys at my school, and mixed schooling is better preparation for the real world. Still, I wouldn't have minded a few more hints during my school years that while the world might be co-ed on paper, it could learn a thing or two from the mixed-school model.
If Carly's stressed, we really have got problems
I never imagined I'd find much in common with a WAG, not owning a single It bag (not that I don't want one, Santa).
But when Carly Zucker admitted to being stressed about money and an indecisive shopper, I thought I'd found a potential NBF.
Then I read the small print.
By "stressed about money" she means that counting her England footballer boyfriend Joe Cole's pieces of gold can keep her up into the wee hours, whereas I'm worrying why I'm approaching fuel poverty 40 years off retirement age.
And the indecision is nothing to do with trying to choose between two pairs of cheap shoes, but a wholesale panic every time she hits the shops and finds out she can afford absolutely every item of clothing she wants.
This must be particularly galling, seeing as no one is interested in seeing Carly in anything other than a bikini.
Tasks we might be let off
Easing sick employees back into the workplace with "fit notes" (rather than keeping them wrapped up at home protected by a sick note) seems like a good idea in principle. I only wonder how the doctor would decide what tasks returning employees could and couldn't do, because I have a feeling it might cause a few upsets among able-bodied colleagues forced to pick up the slack.
Could we perhaps set up a system of rolling, one-day-only fit notes for all workers, so we could get some respite from the worst aspects of our jobs from time to time? They would come into play once a week, and each fit note would include a few job tasks we could give up for the chosen day.
Teachers, I guess, would rule out marking, and politicians might avoid making decisions (always unpopular). I'd ask to be excused from taking public transport for the day, which would pretty much preclude me from lifting a finger to do anything else.
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