A co-educational school is also very successful in challenging sexist attitudes. Many subjects in secondary school allow for considerable classroom discussion and debate. In a co-educational school both the female and male perspectives will be explored in such discussions and this is a very important learning experience for all. In so doing they learn that 'equality' does not mean 'sameness' - that men and women often have different perspectives on the same issues and that each approach has a great deal to offer the other.
In academic terms it should be noted that both boys and girls at the Cathedral School attain the same distinction in terms of examination results: the percentage of A*/A grades at GCSE here is equally high for both genders, indicating that neither gender is disadvantaged by the other, in fact the reverse is true, both are enhanced by the presence of the other.
Advocates of single-sex schooling sometimes make hefty claims about the academic advantages of such schools, pointing to statistically significant disparities in examination results. In truth such differences may be due more to the socio-economic background of the pupils at the school or the selectivity of the intake. In our own situation, the Cathedral School proves that co-education can be extremely successful academically, and with all the social and personal development advantages too.