Girls at single sex schools are so high achieving that when they leave they are often disappointed by how “ineffective” boys are, a London teacher claimed today.
Suzie Longstaff, head of sixth form at Putney High School, said her pupils are so competent that they could run the school themselves.
She added that all the girls want “to go to Oxford or Cambridge universities, be doctors or rule the world” and get a shock when they leave and meet boys who “can be quite lazy.”
But despite their success at single-sex school, Mrs Longstaff warned that girls are then often overtaken by men because they “hide their light under a bushel” and can not “blag.”
In a bid to help students to think on their feet in the workplace, Mrs Longstaff introduced stand-up comedy lessons for her sixth formers.
She said: If you look at any one of the girls I teach in the sixth form, I could have them running a FTSE 100 company any day. I have taught in all-boys and mixed schools, but it’s here I know our girls could run the school. All they know is how to be successful.
“They work so hard and do so well. When they go into the big wide world they are disappointed about how ineffective boys are.”
She added: “Because they work so hard to be so successful it is taken as red that is what you do. I don’t want to make it a gender issue but boys can be quite lazy can’t they? But they have more practice at performing off the cuff.”
£15,000 a year Putney High School is a member of the Girls’ Day School Trust. The first comedy masterclass took part yesterday, run by comedy group Hoopla. Girls were taught how to do stand-up, give after dinner speeches and debate.
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The trust’s CEO Helen Fraser said: “Girls love to be prepared and have everything under control and be able to deliver a perfect performance, which is fine but in real life you can’t always be prepared.
“We want to loosen girls up and say you have a fantastic brain, just go for it. In corporate life if you are not prepared to open your mouth and make yourself noticed it will be hard to be a captain of industry when you are 50.”
Mrs Longstaff said she had the idea for introducing comedy lessons to her school after watching pupils being beaten by boys in a ‘balloon debate’, where students argue for a particular person to be thrown out of a hot air balloon.
Despite her pupils being “beautifully prepared” with their presentation on saving Raisa Gorbachev, they were beaten by a group of boys who successfully argued for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il to survive. She said: “They blagged it with so much personality that, despite arguing for a dictator, they won.”
