Adhaalath Party Protests Decision to Mix Males and Females in Schools

By Ahmed Nazeer | September 29th, 2010 | via Minivan news

The Adhaalath Party is to take urgent action against the government’s decision to provide secondary and primary education at the main schools in Male’.

Mixing genders and various age-groups will lead to social and disciplinary problems, Adhaalath foresees.

At an urgent meeting held last night, Adhaalath declared the Education Ministry’s decision to provide both primary and secondary education at all main schools in Male’ as “wrongful”.

According to Adhaalath, it is one of many such “wrongful decisions” that include “making Islam and Dhivehi optional subjects”, and “differential treatment against Arabiyya School”.

Changing the boys-only Majeediyya School and the girls-only Ameeniyya School to mixed-gender schools is the latest among the line of “wrongful decisions” that, Adhaalath said, involved misleading parents and working against the management of schools.

“Unisex schools and mixing different age groups could lead to potential social and discipline issues”, Adhaalath said. The party has decided to meet the government’s concerned authorities first and issue a press statement using information from surveys conducted by Americans and Western countries on co-education.

Adhaalath’s urgent action would involve bring the issue to the attention of parents and meeting political parties, NGOs and Parent Teacher Associations (PTA).

Deputy Minister of Education Dr Abdulla Nazeer said the ministry has not decided to mix female and male students in the secondary grades.

“But we have decided to establish primary grades in all the schools,’’ Nazeer said. ‘’So Majeediyya School, Dharumavantha, Ameeniyya and Hiriya will no longer be solely for Secondary education.’’

Secondary education will be provided in all the primary schools as well.

‘’It is in the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) manifesto to change every school to a place where secondary and primary grades are available and to change all schools to one session.’’

Currently only male students can join Majeediyya and Dharumavantha while only females can join Ameeniyya and Hiriya school. They teach grade eight, nine and ten, the final three years leading up to GCE O’Levels.

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