Learning together or separately

Time of India

21-04-2025

Dr Onkar Singh has been the founder Vice Chancellor of the Madan Mohan Malaviya University of Technology, Gorakhpur (U.P.), the first non-affiliating technical University of the U.P. state. Currently, he is Vice Chancellor of Veer Madho Singh Bhandari Uttarakhand Technical University, Dehradun (Uttarakhand)- INDIA. LESS ... MORE
Quite often, the discussions trigger regarding the educational settings in the context of gender i.e. whether to have co-ed or single-gender institutions or convert existing single-gender institutions to co-educational institutions. A recent instance of an attempt to convert a famous all-boys prestigious boarding school to co-education received a lot of flak from its old students. Historically, in most cases, the attempts to transform any existing single-gender educational institution into a co-education type have seen much criticism.
Delving deep into co-education or single-gender learning education environment shows that the socio-cultural conditions of India have been pushing for special efforts to educate everyone. As per the available statistics, achievement of a Gender parity index of more than 1 in education means that the special efforts for ensuring access to education for females have proved their worth. This has been possible with the constantly evolving education system consisting of diverse nature of institutions at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.
Kudos to the efforts of the state and philanthropists in setting up education centres of co-education type and single-gender i.e. boys or girls type. Undoubtedly, the number of educational institutions meant exclusively for boys or girls are small fraction of available institutions, but the presence of such exclusive single-gender institutions has its own relevance.
The government's initiative of setting up of large number of residential Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas since 2004 has been a game changer in school education for girls and the reluctance of parents to send girls to schools is overcome to a great extent. Besides, special all-women higher education institutions in different disciplines have also been set up by the Government to facilitate female education seekers to fulfil their aspirations. Along with this, a good number of educational institutions have come up at all levels with the active participation of private education providers.
With the increasing participation of females in almost all domains nearly at par with their male counterparts, sometimes a nuanced question as to whether girls want exclusive women's institutions or co-education institutions arises. Likewise, the existing institutions for only men are also targeted for conversion to both genders institutions. Thus, despite there being a maximum share of co-education institutions, these exclusive single-gender institutions are commonly catching the eye and necessitating contemplation about their continuance in existing form.
An introspection into this issue from a women's institution perspective shows that these are individual preferences depending upon cultural backgrounds, educational goals, personal learning requirements, learning patterns, etc. Some of the obvious reasons for females preferring all-women educational institutions appear to be safety concerns, parents' willingness, better learning focus leading to better performance, freedom from gender-based discrimination/bullying/harassment, absence of stereotyping in context to subjects/choices, freedom of participation in activities, motivation from female role models, freedom from any social pressure as to what to do what not to do, lesser distractions, female-centric academic ambience, etc. There could also be certain cultural and religious factors dissuading females from participating in the mixed-gender educational environment. The varying education access in urban and rural areas, distances to education centres, and availability of opportunities also affect the decision-making by parents who want academic, emotional and social development of their children. The trend shows that those from the urban centres do not bother with co-education or single-gender institutions while those from rural or semi-urban areas prefer only women's institutions with little consideration for the education quality. These preferences are also dependent upon the age of children, as co-education is not a concern at the primary education level, it becomes an important attribute in selecting educational institutions at higher secondary and higher education levels. The frequently reported occurrences of gender-based discrimination and crime against women are unable to infuse confidence in parents/guardians about the safety and security of their wards, which corroborates the relevance of only women's education ambience for greater accomplishments without fear and hesitation.
Nevertheless, these only-women education settings could lead to gaps with respect to congeniality to real-life mixed-gender work spaces, real-world diversities, availability of opportunities, communication with society, and social development. Thus, a trade-off is practised by those families that are willingly sending their children to single-gender institutions to pursue their education and any attempt to dismantle existing special purpose institutions will lead to disruptions in the education journey.
A comprehensive look at the reasons for the selection of the single-gender or mixed-gender education setting points to the perception, opinions and choices of individuals/families being formed on various attributes. This makes it inevitable to continue with exclusive single-gender educational institutions, failing which a significant number of children may be deprived of education opportunities for reasons beyond their control.
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Views expressed above are the author's own.