Our new schools minister, Sarah McCarthy Fry, thinks that girls might be more interested in science if there were no boys in class and lessons were 'girl friendly' - related to work that appeals to us girlies, like building incubators to save babies' lives.
Well think again, minister, because your problem may be that girls in general just aren't that keen on science.
I wasn't when I was fifteen, in my girls' school. I wanted to take history and art for GCE, but back then ministers were desperate to get girls doing science.
So school insisted I take physics with chemistry and geography instead. Horrid.
I was hopeless at it and almost blew up the school by mistake. We'd been told not to put anything hot into the bin, but when one is bored rigid and dreaming of kings, queens and paintings, it is difficult to pay attention, so I threw something hot into the bin, it exploded, sulphurous fumes filled the lab, several asthmatics, including me, were incapacitated, and it serves the school right for ruining my life.
Because straight after O-levels I ran away to art school. So no A-levels or university for me. And that was fifty years ago.
Now here we go again trying to get girls to do science. Our leaders are clearly flogging a dead horse. They've been trying for half a century, it still isn't happening, so doesn't that tell them anything?
Girls prefer the arts, boys prefer the sciences.
And for the exceptional girls who love science, then it is probably better to learn it in a boy-free class, because teenage boys and girls tend to distract each other, boys will hog the more thrilling equipment and show off, because no boy wants to be beaten at his own game by a girlie, few boys fancy a swot, and it is a brave girl who will plough on regardless.
But in their own class, girl scientists can reach the moon, just as boys can if they so wish even if there isn't a caring, save the world ecology task or darling baby's incubator in sight.
