A war of the sexes has broken out among a pair of Bradford grammar schools.

'Single sex schools are best' was the message parents and pupils at Bradford Girls Grammar School heard last night.

Headteacher Lynda Warrinton told a 2,000-strong audience packed into St George's Hall for the annual speech day and prizegiving that the proof of the pudding was in top-ranking results.

Her words came just weeks after Bradford Grammar School - boys only apart from a score of girls in the sixth form - said it would break with centuries of tradition by admitting girls to the main school from next September.

Mrs Warrinton's counterpart there, Stephen Davidson, who was in the audience, responded to her claims by saying both sexes at his school would flourish under a co-educational system.

"If you just look at the league tables they are always going to be dominated by single sex schools because they are the schools with the long history of academic rigour," he said.

Girls and boys needed to be able to understand each other from an early age in order to be equipped for future life, he added.

But Mrs Warrinton responded: "Our girls leave school confident and competent young women, well-equipped to go into further education or any career.

"They have plenty of opportunities to socialise and they are able to get on well with the opposite sex.

"Single sex schools are best. All the schools at the top of the league tables are single sex, proving year after year that both girls and boys in single sex schools thrive and achieve better results than in a co-educational environment."

A recent league table from the Independent Schools Information Service saw Bradford Girls Grammar top the district league for GCSE exam results.

Guest speaker at the speech day was Oxford University neurologist Professor Susan Greenfield, who travelled to Bradford to talk about the human brain and how it effects learning.

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