When I first became a teacher, I bought into the notion that single-sex schools were an anachronism – a result of historical happenstance that no longer had a place in the 21st century. I imagined all-boys schools as a macho world of Spartan dormitories and testosterone-charged classrooms. I assumed the boys graduated with repressed memories of traumatic hazing rituals and an unhealthy amount of anxiety around girls.
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Then, after two exhausting years teaching English at a mixed comprehensive, I moved to an all-boys independent school to see what it was like. I enjoyed it so much that when I moved from London to Oxford, I decided to teach at another (although my current one is co-ed at sixth form).
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