For many parents, the decision of how to give your daughter a great educational opportunity in her teen years can be a difficult one. One option that is worth considering is sending your daughter to a girl's boarding school. The initial resistance that many parents have for such schools is the idea of sending the child away from home for schooling.

In many cases, providing a safe and healthy place for your daughter to go where she will be well cared for is a good option for parents who have difficulty juggling family and work responsibilities. This is not irresponsible when you consider many of the academic advantages that girls who go to an all female boarding school realize during their years in that institution.

As much as we wish it was not so, when girls attend school with the opposite sex during their teenage years, a number of issues arise that can hinder the academic potential of your daughter. The presence of boys in the classroom is a distraction for young women in puberty. Further, boys often intimidate or dominate the attention of instructors even if those students are not the most promising academic talents in the class room.

Finally, while it would never be admitted, often teachers at the secondary school level harbor an unspoken bias for male students considering them to be the future of society while the girls are there to await until they can get married and become mothers. This old fashioned attitude is not fashionable and so it is never discussed.

Many times teachers and administrators may not be aware they are dealing with such a bias. But it is there and it can have an adverse affect on the academic future of promising female students. By sending your daughter to a private girl's boarding school, many of those problems simply disappear. The ways that a girl's boarding school may be right for your daughter are many including…

Career Development Exclusively for Girls

Secondary school is a time when an adolescent girl begins to think about her academic career in terms of a long range career. The problems of gender bias at a public school or even in private coed schools is one reason to give your daughter the advantage of sending her to a girl's boarding school. There, the focus of the administration, career counseling and of the individual classes are on the methodology of preparing young women for a career of achievement beyond school years.

Because girls boarding schools will give your daughter access to top female educators who have achieved success in the male dominated worlds of science and business, these instructors can prepare young women to take on that kind of challenge and find their own success there as well. Because there is no need to accommodate the male perspective at any level of the administration of the school, every priority is preparing young women for further academic achievement or for their eventual career goals. That single focus can be a tremendous advantage of a young woman such as your daughter who shows tremendous promise.

Access to Knowledge and to Educators

There simply is no denying that in a coed classroom, boys are often more outgoing and willing to dominate class discussions and the instructor's attention. Many teenage young women are retiring by nature and unwilling to compete for attention in the classroom. The result is that their education suffers because of the natural tendency for boys to take control.

In a classroom that is exclusively populated by female students and instructors, each girl will have equal chance to speak out, answer or ask questions and seek the best that is available from each lesson. Studies confirm that students in an all girl's boarding school setting participate in class more actively and their success with their studies benefits from that chance to interact with the material and with their instructors.

No Boys to Love

Adolescence is a time in a girl's life when the attraction to young men is natural and expected. But in a classroom setting, that draw can be a tremendous distraction. In an all girl's boarding school, the problem of flirtation with boys is eliminated. This allows young ladies to focus on their studies and put off their romantic ambitions until a more appropriate time.

In addition to removing temptations from the students at a girl's boarding school, keeping boys out of the educational setting eliminates the problem of frequent unwanted romantic of sexual advances from young men in a setting where academics should dominate. Because girls no longer have to worry about looking good for boys or about fending off their advances, all of those energies can turn to the tasks at hand. The successes girls achieve because these distractions are eliminated are noteworthy.

The live-in environment of a girl's boarding school often benefits students because a strong sense of community can develop where equality and cooperation are emphasized. Girls often develop a sense of "sisterhood" which leads to a "one for all and all for one" approach to school life.

This culture is so much different from the typical competitive coed school setting which often isolates girls to struggle alone. Many girls come out of their years at a girl's boarding school considering their time in that institution to be cherished memories and with friendships that last a lifetime. These friendships and the much improved academic setting of a girl's boarding school make this choice for your daughter's academic next step worth considering.

Here are additional resources you might be interested in:

What to Look for in Boys Boarding School

What are the Benefits of Boarding High Schools?