Next month Glasgow City Council will decide whether or not to maintain the incredibly successful all-girls status of Notre Dame High School. Nestled in the affluent west end of the city, the girls who attend come from a greater geographical area spreading to the north west of the city.

Many of the girls who attend do not come from affluent families or communities but, through access to this school, go on to achieve exceptional academic success.

The current wider catchment area takes in pupils from St Ninian’s and Corpus Christi primaries. If Notre Dame High School’s catchment area was reduced, as would be the case if the all-girls status is lost, girls from communities to the north west of the city, such as Knightswood and Drumchapel, would no longer have access to this route to academic success and, in some cases, this is their route out of deprivation.

In other words, Note Dame High School is one of the foremost schools in the country at bridging the attainment gap, so to tamper with that success, with no identifiable educational gain, would be a wrong decision. And without any net educational gain, there seems little justification to spend time and money on a change.

Discrimination is often cited as a reason for change, with people stating that boys and girls should be able to attend a Catholic high school together. They already can do, at St Thomas Aquinas, another one of Glasgow’s exceptionally successful high schools. An end to gender being an entry requirement would also strengthen the arguments of those who oppose the existence of denominational schools.

All-girls schools are permitted under the Equality Act i.e. all-girls schools are not discriminatory. To claim that I and other councillors are discriminating against boys in our own communities and congregations is an emotive and unhelpful accusation in the context of children’s education.

An all-girls school as an option for parents maintains a greater choice across the city. And, as the primary educators of their children, the breadth of choice for parents must be maintained. As a physics teacher, it is demoralising when girls choose chemistry and biology over physics because physics is still seen as a “boys” subject.

This problem doesn’t exist at Notre Dame, so if we are looking to increase the numbers of young women going into STEM university courses and professions, we should not be ending one of our city’s best sources of female engineers and physicists. If, like me, you wish to maintain all the benefits of the all-girls status of Notre Dame, email your local councillors and let them know how you feel. Let’s keep this great school the way it is, great.