An all-girls school in south Dublin is abandoning its single-sex status and welcoming boys for the first time in response to demand from parents.
The Protestant fee-paying Rathdown school in Glenageary will enrol boys in both its junior and senior schools on a phased basis from September.
School principal Brian Moore said the move is a response to “parental demand,” with a shift towards co-ed schools benefitting all children.
“We’ve seen that asking the same question has trended towards an increasing openness to the move to co-ed,” he told Newstalk radio.
“Parents in our locality and parents that come to join our boarding school are coming from communities where they’re telling us that they would like their daughters to attend a co-ed school and they would like an opportunity for their sons [to enrol].”
Mr Moore said the need for single-sex schools is simply not there anymore.
“Our community is telling us that they would favour a mixing of the sexes in the classes, for all the social benefits, and all the other well-publicised and well-explained reasons why it is good to mix.”
