Does the segregation of boys and girls at a co-ed school amount to direct discrimination?

Yes. In HM Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills v Interim Executive Board of Al-Hijrah School, the Court of Appeal has overturned the High Court’s decision that a school’s complete gender segregation of pupils aged 9–16 was not sex discriminatory. In the Court’s view, the High Court had erred by comparing the treatment of boys and girls as two groups and concluding that, since they were both being denied the opportunity to interact/socialise/learn with or from the opposite sex, there was no discrimination. The correct approach under S.13 of the Equality Act 2010 was to look at the treatment from the perspective of an individual girl or boy at the school. The child was being denied the opportunity to mix with the opposite sex, which was a detriment imposed because of the protected characteristic of sex. Thus, the treatment was direct discrimination.
AHS is a voluntary aided faith school for boys and girls aged between four and 16. It has an Islamic ethos and for religious reasons separates boys and girls from Year 5 onwards (when they are aged nine and above) for lessons, trips, breaks and lunchtimes. In June 2016 Ofsted inspected the school, which was later sent a draft of Ofsted’s report rating the school as inadequate and citing concerns about its segregation policy. Ofsted took the view that the policy limited pupils’ social development, and its report pointed out that the school had not considered ‘how to mitigate the potentially negative impact of this practice on pupils’ chances to develop into socially confident individuals with peers from the opposite gender’. Ofsted believed that this gender segregation was unlawful under the EqA. However, there was no suggestion in the report that either boys or girls received a different or qualitatively poorer level of education than the other. The school brought a judicial review challenge to the proposed report. As the most senior official at Ofsted, the Chief Inspector was named as respondent.
Mr Justice Jay upheld the challenge in the High Court (Brief 1062), ruling that Ofsted had been wrong to conclude that there was a breach of the EqA. Given that there was no distinction between the opportunities afforded to girls and boys to interact with each other, it could not be said that one sex was treated less favourably than the other. Furthermore, Jay J held that argument that segregation in a faith school generates a feeling of inferiority as to the status of females in the community is too broad and sweeping an assertion to make in a multi-cultural society, where segregation is not enforced but chosen by parents. Ofsted appealed to the Court of Appeal.
The Court of Appeal agreed with Ofsted’s submission that Jay J had erred by regarding the arrangements at the school as non-discriminatory on the basis that they were ‘separate but equal’. Since the definition of direct discrimination in S.13 EqA refers to a person, it was necessary to view less favourable treatment under that provision from the perspective of an individual pupil, rather than his or her sex as a group. From that perspective, a girl pupil who wished to mix or socialise with a boy pupil was precluded from doing so because of her sex, a protected characteristic; whereas, if she did not have that characteristic, and was a boy pupil, she would have been able to mix or socialise with all the other boys (this was also the case where the genders were reversed). This treatment was clearly less favourable, and the denial of opportunity to mix with the opposite sex was detrimental, as evidenced by the Ofsted report’s finding that segregation had an adverse impact on the quality and effectiveness of the education given by the School to girl pupils and boy pupils respectively. Accordingly, the treatment amounted to direct discrimination contrary to Ss.13 and 85 EqA.
Although it was not necessary, given the above findings on less favourable treatment, the majority of the Court (the Master of the Rolls and Lord Justice Beatson) set out obiter comments refuting Ofsted’s proposition that segregation at the School caused greater psychological harm to girl pupils because the female sex has the minority share of power in society and that power imbalance will be reinforced in adulthood by the loss of opportunity for girls and boys to socialise with each other and to regard each other as equals. The majority considered that, as the Ofsted report itself made no such assertion and there was no evidence from expert educationalists to support the proposition, Jay J had been correct to reject Ofsted’s reliance on this ground. Lady Justice Gloster, by contrast, would also have upheld this ground of appeal. In her view, on the specific evidence before the Court, Ofsted had demonstrated that the sex segregation at the school involved greater practical detriment for girls than boys.

Link to transcript: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2017/1426.html