SINGLE sex schools give girls the “space to grow up” without the distractions of boys, according to the headteacher of Oxfordshire’s only girls’ state secondary school.

Didcot Girls School is celebrating a record year of GCSE results.

While the county is well served for single-sex schools in the independent sector, the only single-sex state schools are Didcot Girls School and the town’s all-boy St Birinus School.

Didcot Girls’ headteacher Rachael Warwick said it was disappointing new single-sex schools were not being created.

She said: “It could be seen as old-fashioned but it’s actually about being progressive.

“While a lot of mixed schools also look at leadership roles, building confidence and breaking gender steretotypes, you can be more powerful in the way you deal with those opportunities in an all-girls’ environment.”

The school celebrated its best ever GCSE results this year, with 65 per cent of pupils getting at least five A* to Cs including English and maths and 29 per cent achieving the new English Baccalaureate.

Mrs Warwick said: “You are removed from the peer pressure of feeling you have to look or behave in a certain way.

“It is quite refreshing for girls and allows them to be serious about their studies.”

Because there are no boys to compete with, the school’s science and computing clubs were full of girls who might otherwise have been put off, she said.

Parents from as Oxford and Abingdon send their children to the Manor Crescent school because of the single-sex education, she said.

She said: “Arguably there should be more all-girls schools so people don’t have to travel so far. Teenage girls need a lot of support in terms of developing their confidence and can be much quicker to say they can’t do something. They need space to grow up.”

Nationally, girls continue to outperform boys up to GCSE level, although boys tend to do better at A Level.

But at Didcot Sixth Form, which attracts pupils from Didcot’s two single-sex schools, the girls continue to outshine the boys.

Mrs Warwick put that down to the confidence boost given by a girl-focused education earlier on.

Ella Hawkins, 17, from Upton, said: “We just don’t have the distraction of boys around and our teachers are completely focused on boosting our confidence and our esteem.”

Jade Douglas, 16, from Didcot, said the all-girls setting gave her the confidence to focus on traditionally male subjects such as project design.

She said: “If it was a mixed school I don’t know if I would have taken it because I would have felt that boys would have dominated the lesson.”

Oxfordshire County Council schools improvement cabinet member Melinda Tilley said there was “probably” an argument that girls and boys performed better in single sex environments.

She said: “I think there’s something in it but I don’t know enough about it.

“I wouldn’t mind taking a look at the subject and seeing what the benefits are for boys and girls in single sex education.”