Single-sex schools could offer socio-economic solution to sub-Saharan Africa

The claim that single sex schools, particularly those of girls, participate more and have more interaction with the teacher and receive less harassment from other students than in mixed-sex schools, holds a lot of water. Here, girls have all their time for class and do not waste it on managing an environment dominated by boys. The domination not necessarily being the boys’ numbers but a psychological one- the inferiority complex that boys are better than them in some subjects, especially sciences. It is apparent that in single sex girls’ schools, the girls are not distracted by boys. They thus enjoy maximum comfort. “Boys would be disturbing us in classroom and outside. But because ours is a girls’ school, we freely interact and perform well”, said a senior six student at FAWE Girls’ school in Kigali. The remarks made by this young girl said a lot on the performance of girls in single schools visa avis the mixed ones. Though she could not explain properly what she meant by ‘disturbances’, we read between the lines and concluded that she meant the social stereotypes and prejudice against girls in schools. “Girls are generally weak in sciences and if we had boys here, I am sure they would out-compete them. But since it is a single sex school, they can push on”, remarked one Nyakana Oswald who was a teacher at FAWE girls. This is where the problem is; even teachers think girls are weak. You can therefore imagine a situation where teachers, boys, some girls and the neighboring community, think that the girls are weak. Such is the environment the girls have to escape, at least for the moment. The whole society is to blame, especially rural communities. However, in the mean time, we need separate schools for girls if they are to excel. We have to save girls from a demeaning environment if we are to succeed. In Rwandan rural secondary schools, for example, we still have division of labour based on sex. Boys fetch water while girls mop and sweep classrooms. The sweeping time table is clear for girls everyday. We observed this trend of activities and assignments given according to sex, while being given a guided tour by one teacher in the Eastern Region. Though he asked to remain anonymous, said, “The girls know well that they have to sweep and the boys also know that they have to provide water. I, as a teacher want to see the class clean in time. I cannot go on asking which sex should sweep or not. That is none of my business.” This sets a very bad precedent in Sub- Saharan African societies. It, therefore, goes beyond the effect it has on girls’ academic performance. There is considerable division of labour between men and women in other activities such as crop production. In such situations, usually men plough the fields whereas women take on a major share of sowing, weeding, applying fertilizer and pesticides, harvesting and threshing yet in the end, the money goes to men. Similarly, men tend to do the work of large-scale cash cropping, while women take care of household food production and small-scale cultivation of cash crops. This pattern is particularly pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa where men and women customarily farm separate plots. Men tend to grow cash crops and keep the income while women use their land primarily for subsistence crops to feed their families. The whole story is emphasized in a rather implicit way in our school today. Unfortunately, those affected and the ones causing the problem do it unknowingly. It is therefore imperative that we realize the importance of creating an environment that allows the girl child to slowly but steadily unchain herself for the betterment of society. The social stereotypes and prejudices offer a cross cutting social economic effect that we have to address. Let us promote single sex schools and give our daughters and sons and future posterity, an opportunity to live in a better world. Ends