Labour calls for banning of single-sex schools within 15 years

Labour is planning on tabling a bill in the Dáil this week calling for the banning of single-sex schools in the state within 15 years.

The party says the bill is needed amid “the wider discussion about gender equality” and argues it is already “de facto” policy because the Department of Education has not sanctioned a new single-sex school since 1998.

Labour TD for Dublin Bay North Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, says the move is long overdue.

“Our proposal and our bill is that over 10 years every primary school should be co-educational and after 15 years that should happen at second-level,” he told Newstalk Breakfast.

“We appreciate the second level conversation is more complex, there are different dynamics at play there, but that’s what we’re trying to achieve.

“I think it will start the conversation rolling and the Department of Education has to be a persuader of school communities to amalgamate, or more simply to just accept both genders from a given September.

He said that the assumption that girls usually fare better in single-sex schools “doesn’t stand up to modern analysis” and was “debunked” by the ESRI a number of years ago.

He says that schools should be “reflective of winder society” and argues that “we don’t have single-sex creches, we don’t have single-sex universities”.

“I think if we’re trying to tackle some of the issues in our society that affect women quite profoundly, we are probably going to be more successful doing that in the multi gendered scenario,” he adds.