However, she soon discovered that whereas girls arrived promptly and sat quietly in the front, boy jostled in late, bristling with physicality and, despite her best, intentions, she found that simply in attempting to engage boys' interest, she too spent more time on them.
After nearly 10 years as head at St George's School in. Edinburgh, one of 200 girls-only schools in Britain, Dr Judith McClure still radiates enthusiasm, but also she still remembers the effects of boys' and girls' different approach to school work. "Take politics: the girls wanted to debate, but the boys didn't want to listen, they just sniggered," she recalls.
There is little dispute that boys and girls differ in the rate at which they develop and that between 12 and 16 years of age they are more likely to thrive educationally if taught separately. Indeed, even as early as primary school, girls see boys as a different species, best avoided, who take over in the classroom as well as the playground.
The social or emotional consequences of such separation are less clear. Those favouring co-ed say exclusively male/female environments promote lack of respect for the opposite sex, block integration into mixed society, or promote non-traditional gender orientation.
Proponents of single-sex education argue it provides a safe haven for children to be children, alleviating much teenage stress involved in growing up in front of an audience of the opposite sex. Removing the distraction of gender allows boys and girls to concentrate on maximum development of their capabilities and talents. Girls can show genuine enthusiasm for a subject, without fear of boys' derision.
Conversely, "Boys can be boys," argues Andrew Hunter, head of Merchiston Castle School, also in Edinburgh. "They need more time potentially than girls to find themselves. Those who don't like boys-only schools would say they are barbaric and uncivilised. Yet we would argue that this is a very gentle school, simply because some of the tensions of growing up as a teenager have been taken away."
A recent survey at St George's School makes refreshing honest reading. Informants ranged from current students and ex-pupils who had left within the past 23 years, to parents and staff. Despite strong leadership opportunities and strong, positive role models, those questioned also saw the limitations of working within a girls-only environment and recognised it was not a realistic mirror of the outside world.
Several parents who had recognised a tendency for the girls to be 'bitchy', pointed out that it would be unusual to find adolescent girls in any setting where falling out, name-calling, and talking behind people's baks were never evident. .
By contrast, boys' bad behaviour is often linked to physical frustration. Their need for competitiveness is as essential a component in their development as girls need to nurture, maintains Hunter, who channels boys' drive to succeed academically and physically in a controlled environment. .
Single-sex provision in state schools in Scotland has all but disappeared, whereas it has a much higher profile in both state and independent sectors in England. In the independent sector north of the Border, a growing number of boys' schools are introducing girls at sixth form stage, whereas girls-only schools are maintaining their single-sex status. Perhaps the idea of a boys joining a girls' school is a PC step too far for anyone with half an ounce of testosterone in his body.
Mark Erskine and Stewart's Melville have an interesting diamond shaped structure, with co-ed at the young end, then separate boys and girls-only schools, before coming together at sixth form. By then both boys and girls have got through a stage that Merchiston's Andrew Hunter calls "the tunnel of adolescence, which particularly boys can often find quite demanding and challenging".
Single-sex schools alleviate the possible disadvantages of infrequent daily contact with members of the opposite sex through regular social, cultural and semi-academic links with other schools. "We ensure that outside the classroom we maximise all our links with girls' schools. The Merchiston boy, I can assure you, does not have a problem relating to girls," laughs Hunter.
So you pays your money - you takes your choice, with single-sex education in Scotland. Or, as Hunter concludes: "I'm never keen to say that boys-only schools are better than co-ed - I don't necessarily believe that - I think what's important is that parents have a choice."
