Female Supremacy Articles - Page 24 "Women's town" to put men in their place

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Most refreshing is the climate of academic achievement. In some co-ed independent schools, the games culture - where hockey is more important than Hamlet - can rule; teachers have to overcome an "uncool to work" ethos. Indeed, the laddish anti-learning culture is one main reason why the Government thinks boys fall so far behind. At one boarding school I taught at, the boys hung out a huge banner on Speech Day, proclaiming that "Absolute Zero Effort is Cool". Silly boys would make sucking-up sounds if a keen pupil put his hand up in class. At North London Collegiate, there's a forest of hands when a question is asked.

It's a battle to get boys to read, but most girls I now teach have read classics such as Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations, and much else. You see girls walking around school with Isabel Allende novels under their arms. And it's highly rewarding to be able to suggest some wider or holiday reading without the class falling about in amusement.

My Year 8 class is studying Jane Eyre. There's no way such a book would be on the agenda for 12-year-olds at a co-ed school. The boys would take one look at the number of pages (nearly 500) and switch off - and put the girls off in the process. In my experience, boys cannot cope with more demanding works. That's why short, snappy, basic books like Of Mice and Men and The Old Man and the Sea are the staple GCSE set texts at so many co-ed independents.