This article employs the concept of 'everyday multiculturalism' to examine what students at an elite school in Australia are taught about working with and across difference through global citizenship education within a single-sex classroom model. The authors explore the ways in which larger social cohesion agendas are reinforced through the meanings and practices of global citizenship education to facilitate increased interactions between different groups around a set of shared values and common practices. The authors illustrate how this approach to global citizenship education and the school's single-sex classroom model both maintain racial, ethnic and gendered divisions within the student body. Within this schooling context, students are not provided the kinds of instructional spaces that promote interdependence and habitual engagement necessary for productively working with and across difference.