Rathdown School, an all-girls private school in Glenageary, Co Dublin, is to admit boys for the first time to its junior and senior schools in response to parental demand.
Brian Moore, principal of the senior school, said the move followed surveys of parents and local schools, along with analysis of wider trends and educational outcomes in Ireland and abroad.
“The need for a single sex school isn’t there any there anymore. We’re seeing a shift to a need for co-ed schools because of the benefits that boys and girls get from socialising together and being in class together,” he said.
The move to co-education will see the phased introduction of boys to its 200-pupil junior school from September 2022 and to its 285-student senior school from September 2023.
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Boarding will remain girls-only pending the construction of a new boarding wing for boys.
Set within 16 acres in Glenageary, the school offers hockey, cricket, basketball and athletics on campus. Fees range from €5,495 to €7,450 for day pupils and €20,600 for boarders.
Rathdown School says its subject and sports offering is "co-education-ready" for the introduction of boys. It says it will consider introducing rugby if there is demand in the coming years.
The move means there will be just one girls school with a Protestant ethos left in the country - Alexandra College in Dublin's Milltown.
Until recently, Rathdown featured a “why girls-only” section on its website which extolled the virtues of single sex education.
It said it offered girls the chance to “be themselves” and that girls did better academically in single-sex classes and had every opportunity to become a leader.
However, Mr Moore said research from the ESRI and elsewhere indicates that “school effectiveness” rather than gender has a bigger impact on student outcomes.
He said the school’s main motivation in changing its admission policy was to move with the times and was not related to enrolment trends, which have been growing in recent years.
Mr Moore said most parents at its senior school and a “significant majority” of parents in the junior school supported the change.
“We’ve been surveying families and it has been trending in this direction... we’ve engaged with the local community and in this area of south Dublin, especially among younger families, they favour co-ed,” he said.
“Allowing boys the same opportunity as our girls to be educated in Rathdown School will resonate with what our families, prospective families and feeder schools have told us. They value what our small community provides for girls and want the same for their sons.
“We want to be fully inclusive, and this will allow us to broaden our footprint in our local community and in the country as a whole – as well as further afield.”
Dermot Dix, principal of Rathdown Junior School said the school's mission and values were based on inclusivity and diversity, and on being an educationally progressive, child-centred school.
“Our class sizes will remain small, and our students will receive the same, high-quality individual attention that they have always received, and this new development will only enhance their social and personal development.”
