Politoblog

Sweden has taught me a great deal about my own country, notably that the UK is far more socially conservative than I had ever realised. These lessons have mainly been conveyed through expressions of utter shock and confusion as I describe my school experiences to my Swedish friends. In general, my Swedish friends and I have shocked each other most when recounting our school experiences. In England, I went to a single-sex school. Whilst far from common, this is hardly a surprising or indeed particularly interesting fact about my life. In the UK, 12% of private schools are girls-only, and 10% are boys-only. However, when I tell Swedes that I went to an all-girls school, they just look baffled. The most common response is: “Those schools still exist?” One friend told me that a single-sex school would make headline news in Sweden. And indeed it did: in 2017, the media frantically reported that a school in Örebro had begun offering single-sex classes. My friends’ reactions have made me thin...