Studies show boys do much better in single sex schools, but what about girls? Catherine Harris examines whether schooling can influence a women's leadership potential in later life.
They had two very different school experiences but both ended up in positions of authority.
Tania Simpson, a recent appointee to the Reserve Bank board, founder of a Maori policy advisory firm and member of the Waitangi Tribunal, went to a central North Island co-ed school.
Anne Blackburn, a former banker who holds places on several boards including the New Zealand Ballet and Fisher Funds Management, went to a top Auckland girls school.
So what part, if any, does their schooling play in their eventual outcomes?
For Simpson, it mattered a lot. During her school years, her parents divorced and her high school years were not "an easy journey".
But she had a number of good male friends at school who supported her at a difficult time. She still keeps in touch with some of them.
"I like variety and I get bored easily and the company of boys just seemed to resonate better with me . . . They were more humorous and more relaxed." However, the school itself was not that supportive, especially of Maori students. Simpson's home life was disruptive and her grades were bad.
She watched Maori friends from her bicultural primary school go from being good students to high school drop-outs. Those who stayed on had to be determined. One of Simpson's male friends who wanted to go to teachers college was pressured by the school to accept a bank teller's job.
"In my case, I wanted to do psychiatric studies and the school encouraged me to be a nurse. So we really had to push against low expectations of us."
However, Simpson went on to prove her teachers wrong. She went on to study psychology but found her feet in Maori studies and forged a solid career in Maori development and directorships.
Today her daughter is in a private co-ed school and Simpson thinks choosing a school really comes down to the individual.
"For our son, the research seems to indicate that it's particularly helpful for boys at third form and fourth form levels [year 9 and 10] to be apart from girls and I can absolutely accept that.
"For the girls, I don't think there's an obvious preference either way.
"If I thought my daughter was going to be distracted by being around boys, then I'd put her into a single sex school but she's just not that type of person."
The debate about whether girls perform better at single sex or co-ed environment is old and fierce. But there is very little conclusive research on which is better for girls, and even less on whether single-sex schools enhance a girl's leadership potential.
Despite this, there has been an upsurge in single-sex schools in the United States over the last 10 years, supporters claiming that they lead to better grades and greater confidence for girls.
Some early studies suggest all-girl schools may have the edge when it comes to women taking maths and computer science, or being politically active, later in college. But just as many researchers point to parental interest and socio-economic status as a major factor in any child's educational success.
Sarah Leberman is the head of Massey University's school of management and a specialist in female leadership in academia and sport.
She says the telling comparison is what happens in countries where single-sex schools are a rarity.
"In many other OECD countries, single sex schools are the exception, so if you looked at Germany, it's very rare to have a single-sex school but they have a female chancellor, Angela Merkel. "And whilst I don't know what kind of school she went to, she grew up in what was the old East Germany so it's highly likely that she was in a mixed school."
Having said that, Leberman does a quick scan of prominent female New Zealanders and where they went to school.
Former governor-general Dame Sylvia Cartwright, Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias, former Telecom boss Theresa Gattung and former prime ministers Helen Clark and Jenny Shipley all went to girls' schools.
Only Dame Catherine Tizard, another former governor-general, went to a co-ed school.
"If you looked at all those people, one could argue that it does make a difference," she concedes, "but I think the other thing that's interesting is [that] it's not just the school they went to, it's also their own background and what they've done in their lives."
The arguments in favour of co-ed schools revolve around girls being better prepared for a gendered, multi-cultural world when they leave school.
"Learning how to work with both men and women from different backgrounds is an important skill to learn," Leberman agrees.
So she believes the key is whether a school fosters an atmosphere where girls are encouraged and supported. "Success correlates with confidence."
If confidence is the key to leadership, it often shows up in sports. US researchers have found that girls are six times more likely than boys to quit sport in high school than boys, with direct links to self-esteem, and it seems to be a problem in New Zealand, too. "We know that girls that do well in sport at school and are into sport, actually find they tend to, later on, take up more high-powered jobs," says Leberman.
"In fact, there's research in America which has found that girls who play team sports are more likely to graduate from university, find a job and be employed in a male-dominated industry, and there's even a direct link between playing sports in high school and earning a bigger salary as an adult."
Leberman says there's also some truth to the fact that single-sex schools are perceived as more academic, which means they are more likely to draw students who are academic, making the school's track record "a self-fulfilling prophecy".
Indeed, some researchers believe that when factors like affluence and parental education are taken into account, the advantages of single-sex classrooms simply aren't supported by the evidence.
However, one 1999 study from the Christchurch School of Medicine tried to take family background into account. It still found that there was a "pervasive tendency" for students from single-sex schools to have better exam success, reading scores and lower unemployment later on.
Professional director Anne Blackburn perhaps would not consider herself a poster child for all-girls education, but she does look back at her school years with fondness.
"I had good teachers and I was taught sufficient methods of research and expression in four years to be able to survive very, very easily at university."
Blackburn also swam competitively and played other sports with boys.
Would she have done as well at a co-ed school? "I don't know. In a sense, single sex and co-ed were not quite as binary choices for me because I had an older brother who had lots of friends, we had lots of friends, where there were boys and girls in the family.
"So there was plenty of male company, and in a sense, plenty of male competition."
Blackburn says she has often wondered "whether I would have been distracted by having boys around me all day when I was studying, as opposed to having them in my environment when I was swimming".
All she can say is, at the end of the day, "it suited me".
The consultation period ends today for submissions on the future of Marlborough Girls' College and Marlborough Boys' College in Blenheim. The schools were given three options: to maintain the separate colleges on their existing sites; to co-locate the two colleges on one site; or to create one co-ed college on a new site.