Across South Asia, the debate over co-educational versus single-gender schools captures the region’s deepest tensions around gender, safety, tradition and modernity. While many governments have officially embraced co-ed schooling as the norm, millions of families still prefer — or insist on — separate schools for girls, seeing them as safer, more culturally acceptable and better aligned with local values. The result is a hybrid landscape: public systems that push toward co-education for reasons of equality and cost efficiency, and communities that continue to demand single-sex options for daughters navigating societies where harassment, mobility restrictions and early marriage remain real threats.
India offers the clearest example of how policy and social reality diverge. Most government schools, especially in rural areas, are co-ed by necessity rather than design. Co-education is cost-effective for a vast nation where ensuring any kind of accessible school within walking distance remains a challenge. Yet the proliferation of girls’ secondary schools — both public and private — reflects persistent concerns about adolescent girls’ safety, sexual harassment and social stigma. States like Maharashtra have announced that all newly established schools must be co-ed, explicitly linking the move to gender equality and the need to teach boys and girls to interact respectfully. But many families still opt for girls’ schools when available, believing they offer a more disciplined environment and fewer distractions. The contradiction lays bare how gender norms shape choices even in a system that officially promotes mixed classrooms.
In Pakistan, the picture is even more sharply divided. Separate schools for girls are widespread at both primary and secondary levels, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and parts of Punjab. For many parents, co-ed schooling after puberty is simply not an option; the combination of conservative social norms, widespread harassment during commutes and distrust of school management teams results in a strong preference for girls-only institutions. The state often reinforces this pattern by running segregated schools or establishing “double-shift” arrangements where boys and girls attend the same building at different times to appease community concerns. Yet Pakistan also suffers from some of the world’s highest rates of girls dropping out after primary school, precisely because single-gender schools are not always available in close proximity and families are unwilling to send daughters farther away for co-ed options. In such cases, gender segregation becomes a barrier to girls’ education rather than a protection.
Bangladesh, by contrast, has spent two decades deliberately expanding co-ed opportunities while also strengthening girls-only secondary institutions where demand remains high. One of the most transformative shifts has happened inside the country’s madrasa sector, which used to be overwhelmingly male. Government incentives to enrol girls, curricular reforms and stipends targeted at female students have reshaped the landscape so dramatically that today nearly half of madrasa students are girls. Yet many mainstream parents continue to favour girls’ high schools, especially in peri-urban and rural areas, where they see single-gender settings as safer and more likely to support academic focus. Bangladesh’s success in closing the gender gap in secondary schooling — one of the best in South Asia — reflects not an ideological choice between co-ed and single-sex schools but a pragmatic approach that embraces both, depending on local needs.
Nepal and Sri Lanka present variations of the same theme: co-education dominates in policy and practice, but many private schools, particularly elite and religious ones, still maintain gender segregation. In Nepal’s poorer provinces, girls’ attendance improves dramatically when communities are offered female-only schools or female teachers, underscoring how safety concerns continue to shape educational access. Sri Lanka, with some of the region’s highest literacy rates, maintains a number of prestigious single-gender schools for both boys and girls, legacies of colonial-era education that continue to command strong reputations and impressive academic outcomes.
What unites South Asia is not a clear endorsement of one model over the other, but a continuing struggle to create educational environments where girls can learn without fear and where boys learn to respect equality as a social norm. Co-ed schooling promises a more integrated and modern approach to gender relations, but single-gender schools often remain the only socially acceptable route for girls’ education in conservative or fragile settings. As the region urbanises, modernises and aspires toward greater gender parity, the challenge is not choosing between co-ed and single-gender models but ensuring that whichever system children enter, they find safety, dignity and the opportunity to thrive.
Darlings, Spicy Auntie is baffled. Absolutely baffled. Are we seriously still debating co-ed versus single-gender schools in South Asia in the year of our Goddess 2025? I thought we had moved on to higher-level battles — you know, dismantling patriarchy, redistributing wealth, burning a few outdated rulebooks. But no, here we are, stuck on the question of whether boys and girls should sit in the same classroom without the sky falling. Spoiler: the sky is fine.
Let Auntie be clear: I am totally, unapologetically, gloriously in favor of co-ed schools. Not because co-ed environments are perfect — oh honey, they are far from it — but because anything else feels like a stubborn relic of an era when women were hidden behind curtains and boys were raised to believe girls were mysterious creatures who only existed to serve tea and produce sons. How’s that worked out for us?
Now, the usual suspects opposing co-ed are easy to spot. The conservatives, the religious moral police, the professional bigots — the same gang that panics at the sight of a girl holding a book. These counter-revolutionaries preach “protection” while conveniently ignoring the fact that girls’ safety issues often happen outside the classroom: on the road, at home, in the marketplace, in society’s twisted expectations. Segregation does not solve misogyny; equal education does.
But Auntie must also address, gently yet firmly, a growing trend among some feminist fringe groups advocating for separatist schooling. Sisters, I hear you. I feel your concerns. Toxic boys, harassment, distraction — yes, yes, yes, I’ve lived through all of it. But be careful: what starts as a short-term refuge can easily turn into a long-term surrender. If we remove girls from boys entirely, how do we expect the next generation of men to learn equality, empathy, accountability? How do we build a world where respect is the default, not the exception?
Co-ed spaces, when well-run, force society to confront the messy truth: men and women must coexist, collaborate and respect each other. We don’t achieve gender justice by avoiding boys; we achieve it by raising better boys, and that begins in classrooms where they learn — from day one — that girls are their equals, not their subordinates.
So, my dears, keep your girls’ schools if you must for safety and access. But let’s not abandon the bigger dream. A truly equal world needs co-ed classrooms, enlightened boys, empowered girls, and an education system brave enough to demand both.