There is no significant difference in academic performance between teenagers who attend single-sex or mixed schools, according to research carried out at University of Limerick.
In a study involving almost 5,000 Irish teenagers attending more than 150 different schools, researchers found that after adjusting for social background and other factors, the performance of girls and boys was similar regardless of whether their school was mixed or single-sex.
The research examined outcomes for 15-year-olds in OECD tests administered in Ireland in 2018.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests measured maths, reading, and science performance in 15-year-old boys and girls in Ireland, focusing especially on how students applied their knowledge in real-life situations.
While the raw data showed significant gaps in performance, with single-sex schools performing better than co-educational settings, when the economic, social and cultural backgrounds of individual students, and factors such as school pupil-teacher ratios and resources were taken into account, the gaps became statistically insignificant.
Single-sex and mixed schools in Ireland differ in their intake by social class and prior academic ability levels.
"Our analysis shows no evidence of an academic advantage to attending a single-sex school for boys or girls in Ireland," senior lecturer at UL Dr Darragh Flannery said.
"The differences we see in the raw scores seem to be driven by what is known as 'selection effects'.
"In other words, the fact that children in single-sex schools tend to come from households with higher socioeconomic backgrounds who tend to perform better in school in any case helps explain the gaps we see in performance between the different school types."
The research, published in the British Educational Research Journal, was a joint project between UL's Department of Economics and the University of Murcia in Spain.
It is the latest to make such a finding. Irish studies published in 2010 and in 1997 reached similar conclusions. The Department of Education also favours mixed educational settings and no longer funds the establishment of single-sex schools.
However, compared to other countries Ireland continues to have an unusually high number of single-sex secondary schools. Roughly one third of teenagers here attend one.
"For this reason, the Irish educational system provides an interesting setting for exploring the outcomes of single-sex schooling," Dr Flannery said.
Debate on single-sex versus mixed schools also focuses on schools' role in preparing students for adult life.
"While this study is limited to looking at one type of outcome in academic achievement, future research may be able to explore the relationship between attending single-sex or mixed-sex schools and non-cognitive outcomes such as confidence levels or measures of well-being," Dr Flannery added.
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Career guidance specialist Brian Mooney has said the real drivers of school success are social class and parental expectations.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Mooney said it is healthy to educate children together.
He said: "Schools achieve as much as they're capable of achieving. The teachers do the work, the children progress at the pace they're capable of progressing, but if you start with an advantage, you end up with the same level of advantage on graduation."
However, he added that he found it hard to see how the model of single-sex schools, particularly in Dublin, can be broken down.
Ultimately, he said, parents will make school choices based on what is best for their child.
