City paves way for the end of single-sex schooling

If Parklands Girls' High closes it will leave less than a dozen single-sex state schools open across Yorkshire with two more also set to be replaced.

Leeds will become one of eight education authorities in the region

which no longer has state funded boys or girls-only schools. This follows the merger of Leeds Girls' High – which had been a single sex school since 1897 and Leeds Grammar School which meant the city's two main single-sex schools in the private sector are now one mixed school.

The plans to close Parklands, in Seacroft, are part of Education Leeds's proposals to replace three secondaries, along with Primrose High and City of Leeds School, with two new academies.

Education Leeds and Leeds City Council have developed the plans in response to the Government's National Challenge Initiative which expects all schools to have 30 per cent of pupils achieving five good

GCSE grades, including English and maths, by next year or

face closure.

Parklands High's GCSE results last year were above this threshold – at 33 per cent.

However Education Leeds's chief executive Chris Edwards said its performance was still not good enough and its falling numbers meant the school had become unsustainable.

Because Parklands' closure would mean the end of single-sex state schools in Leeds, the council is launching one of the biggest education consultations it has ever held.

Mr Edwards said there did not appear to be strong demand for separate girls' education in Leeds.

He said: "Much of the successful girls' school provision elsewhere is in either selective or private schools and that is a different type of provision to what we currently offer which is a girls' school in Seacroft.

"Our real problem is that we have a school with 150 places in each year which last year had 65 parents choose it as a first preference for their child. It only fills 45 per cent of its places – this is down from about two-thirds two years ago.

"Talking to parents they say their priority is not a girls' school but a good local school for their children. We are running a city wide consultation to see if there is the demand anywhere in Leeds for a girls' school and at the moment it doesn't look like there is."

Mr Edwards urged any parents who feel strongly on the issue to take part in the consultation by attending one of the remaining three meetings or sending their views to Education Leeds in writing before Friday March 5.

Consultation meetings on the plans take place at 7pm tomorrow at Bruntcliffe High School, at 7pm on Monday, February 8, at Lawnswood High and from 7pm at Allerton High School on Tuesday February 8.

If Parklands closes it will leave 11 single-sex secondary schools in Yorkshire. Bradford has the highest number with five. However two of these, St Joseph' Catholic College for girls and St Bede's School for boys in Heaton are set to be merged into a single co-educational school because of falling pupil numbers. Almost half of the surviving single-sex schools in Yorkshire serve predominantly Asian communities.

This includes Bradford's neighbouring Belle Vue Boys' and Girls' Schools and Feversham College, an independent girls' school until it became the first state-funded Muslim secondary in the country in 2001.

Parental support for single sex education in Batley has seen two schools in the town survive. Batley Girls' High and Batley Business and Enterprise College for boys were due to be closed and replaced with a co-educational school. However, the latest plans call for the two single-sex schools – but scaled down and on one site with another co-educational school opening in Batley.