Coeducational institutions provide valuable socialization experience for children. Boys and girls respond to their environment and process information very differently, and exposure to this phenomena in other children teaches a child to be more flexible and accepting of the differences in others. Even kids with opposite-sex siblings will still gain social awareness and learning by spending time with the opposite-sex peers.
Boys and girls develop beyond their natural tendencies and become more well-rounded when grouped together in an educational setting. When girls are younger, they tend to be more academically adept than boys, but the competitive nature that comes so easily to boys motivates them to try and keep up. Girls learn from boys that competition can lead to greater achievement. The ease with which boys take on risks and cast aside initial failure to retry is a beneficial influence for girls who tend to be more put off by failure and cautious with new and untested strategies. Boys, on the other hand, can learn from girls that sometimes caution is appropriate, and thinking before acting can produce better results.
Most children enter school as primarily kinesthetic learners and often develop alternative or additional learning preferences as they get older. Boys are more inclined to remain kinesthetic, whereas girls typically do well with visual or auditory learning. Mixed-gender classrooms encourage educators to combine different teaching methods, such as visual aids on the whiteboard or kinesthetic tools such as math manipulatives, resulting in more learning methods available to all students.
Life after school is coed. Genders don't have their own employers, hospitals or supermarkets. Young adults entering the workforce and establishing their own lives after completing school and leaving home require certain skills, such as self-advocacy and diversity tolerance. Coed education in their childhood and formative years prepares them to exercise such skills in a mixed-gender world.