SINGLE sex versus co-ed? A hot topic of discussion and debate over the past couple of weeks after Richard Cairns, head of Brighton College, said that girls educated in single-sex schools are at a huge disadvantage.

He described being “perplexed” when parents “end up being swayed by outdated notions about girls performing better in single sex schools and plump for that deeply unrealistic world”.

He continued: “After all, if girls do not learn to socialise with boys as children, what happens when they go out into the work place? They may have a clutch of A*s and a first class degree but if they cannot meaningfully converse and communicate with male colleagues they will be at a huge disadvantage.”

He has, of course, been heavily criticised, as anyone who puts their head above the parapet does these days, for suggesting that it’s better for girls to be educated alongside boys in order to be able to deal with males throughout the rest of their lives.

But I agree with him. In his article, Mr Cairns further explained his view: “... there is something, I feel, much more common to schools that educate both boys and girls and that something is kindness.

“Boys in single-sex school tend to create their own artificial hierarchies where only those in the 1st XV rugby team are truly valued while girls-only schools sometimes suffer a degree of emotional intensity that can lead to bullying.

“Contrast that with a co-educational world where girls admire the boys who dance, sing or act, and so, therefore, do the boys. Contrast that too with a mixed environment where the emotional intensity of all girls is diluted by the boys.”

This is absolutely true and I say this from the rather unusual position of having in my family one girl educated at a girls’ private school and another at a co-ed state school.

The bullying at the girls-only school was indeed intense, with some girls deliberately isolated from friendship groups for years at a time, leaving the targeted girls with nowhere to go for alternative friendship. This happened to both the girl in my family and another girl I know who attends the same school, and the consequences can be dire, not just the loneliness and depression while the child is a pupil at the school, but long after too. You see, once a child is persistently bullied by their same-sex peers, it can foster a general dislike and distrust of other girls and, later, of other women, while at the same time they lack the skills in finding solace and friendship among boys and, later, men, because they are unused to fraternising with them and to a certain extent don’t understand them.

At the same time, the bullies themselves become used to treating a vulnerable and lonely girl with contempt and cruelty, a lesson they take with them into adult life.

My family’s experience of co-ed state education is that it provides the framework for girls to mix happily and confidently with boys not just in their year but in different year groups, boys with different skills and interests, and boys of both nice dispositions and those with nasty, aggressive natures.

Academic performance may be slightly better among pupils at single sex schools, but qualifications and grades aren’t everything. With the news that graduates are finding it harder than ever to land decent jobs, while the relationship between boys and girls and men and women moves on to ever shakier ground thanks to the prevalence of online porn and the reintroduction of medieval attitudes to women thanks to Isis, I believe it’s far more important for girls to know and understand boys than to get an extra A*.

Well done to Wealden MP Nusrat Ghani for kick-starting a review into the worrying increase in the number of sharia courts in the UK.

Last month, during a meeting of the Home Affairs Select Committee, she asked the home secretary Theresa May: “Our rule of law trumps any pop-up sharia court: what can we do about them?” Also last month, 150 women’s organisations urged the government to put an outright ban on sharia courts.

Now there is to be a review of these unofficial courts that uphold Islamic law but cannot hand down rulings in line with British law.

As Ms Ghani says: “Sharia courts are damaging and harmful and contravene British law in their rulings, especially when it comes to divorce and family proceedings. They are particularly harmful to women and children. I am pleased that the home secretary has recognised this, and look forward to further details about the review she [has] announced.”

It’s estimated that there are between 30 and 50 sharia courts operating in the UK, their existence effectively amounting to one law for some British people and another law for the rest, depending on your religion. That goes against this country’s fundamental principles of law and it’s high time the government confronted this issue.