The merger of two of Worcester's most prestigious private schools was announced with much fanfare last December.

The amalgamation of Alice Ottley school for girls and the co-educational Royal Grammar School would create a "flagship school with unrivalled facilities", said the man designated headmaster of the merged school.

But his enthusiasm was not shared by one group - those parents who had deliberately sent their daughters to a single-sex school because of the proven educational benefits of teaching girls in such an environment.

Many were furious, not only with the merger in principle, but the fact that it had been decided on without, they say, any consultation with them.

However, their anger was assuaged to a certain extent by proposals of talks over whether some single-sex lessons would remain.

Now, it seems, that possibility has evaporated, and it has been revealed that all former Alice Ottley girls are to be taught in the same classrooms as boys.

The hope of single-sex classes was always a slim one. It would not have made sense for a school which had opted to go co-educational in principle as well as for practical reasons to teach some boys and girls separately.

And while it was understandable for the school to dangle that hope in front of angry parents, in retrospect it was unfair on them.

Now those parents who are fundamentally convinced of the benefits of single-sex education, but who may have delayed finding a new school for their daughters, have less time to find somewhere else for them to go.