Guangdong's new move to establish a middle school only for girls is a first in the province. Located in downtown Zhuhai, the privately-run Henglong Girls' Middle School plans to enroll 1,000 students next year, targeting middle school girls from Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao.
Girls schools have been highly regarded in western countries, and some successful examples can also be found in modern Chinese history. The director of the Zhuhai education bureau said that hundreds of years of experience in western countries have proved that the pattern of all-girls schools has little negative effect on the growth of students.
But the new school in Guangdong has triggered a heated debate over whether single-sex schools are good for adolescents, and surprisingly even whether they can lead to homosexuality.