Education: Gender and educational achievement Boys’ underachievement

Question 1

Boys in education vs girls

Answer 1

Boys ARE achieving in school – but at a much slower rate to girls

At age 6 – boys are behind girls in reading and writing

Boys are behind girls at GCSE

Boys are more likely to be excluded from school than girls

Question 2

Reasons why boys underachieve in education

Answer 2

• Poor literacy skills
• Decline in traditional men’s jobs (manufacturing industry)
• Feminisation of education
• Lack of positive male role models
• ‘Laddish’ counter-school subcultures
• Expectations of boys
• Leisure

Question 3

Poor literacy skills

Answer 3

Boys have poorer literacy and language skills than girls.
Studies show that most of the reading to children at home is done by mothers so the activity becomes associated with femininity. Thus boys reject it. Also, parents spend less time reading to their sons.

C: Dads and sons campaign, National literacy strategy, Reading champions

Question 4

Decline in traditional men’s jobs (manufacturing industry)

Mitsos and Browne

Answer 4

• Mitsos and Browne claim this has led to a crisis of masculinity – men are unsure of what it is to ‘be a man’.
• Lack of traditional male jobs makes boys believe they will not be able to get a job which leads to a lack of motivation so they give up on trying to get qualifications.

C: Still existence of male dominated jobs which require qualifications

Question 5

Feminisation of education

Answer 5

Sewell argues that schools do not encourage masculine characteristics such as competitiveness and leadership, instead they encourage traits associated with femininity such as methodical work and attentiveness.
He argues that coursework is a major reason for boys’ underachievement as they tend to lack organisational skills.

C: schools does promote ‘masc’ characteristics by doing competitive activities

Question 6

Lack of positive male role models

Read for criticism

Answer 6

There is a lack of positive male role models both at home – large numbers of boys are being brought up in the 1.5 million female-headed lone parent families in the UK.
At school, only 16% of primary school teachers are male.
Therefore, boys have no male role models to look up to and whose example they can follow.

Criticism – Read studied primary schools and the way in which both female and male teachers discipline both female and male students. She found that both female and male teachers use the masculine, disciplinarian discourse (explicit discipline, e.g. raised voice) to ensure students behave. This shows that schools have not become feminised. It also shows that both female and male teachers can be authority figures in relation to students

Question 7

‘Laddish’ counter-school subcultures

Epstien, Francis

Answer 7

Epstein – high achieving working class boys are labelled as ‘swots’ by their peers and tend to be harassed and subjected to homophobic abuse. 
Francis – boys try to avoid being labelled as ‘swots’ because educational achievement is seen as feminine so they do little or no schoolwork and mess about in lessons.

Question 8

Expectations of boys

Myhill and Jones

Answer 8

• Teachers are less strict with the boys, they more tolerant of their disruptive behaviour, expect less from them, etc.
  At the same time, boys are more disruptive so get sent out of lessons and miss out on learning.
• Myhill and Jones – carried out semi-structured interviews with 144 students (in Year 1 – 10) about their perceptions of whether teachers treat boys and girls differently. They found that boys are treated more negatively than girls.

Question 9

Leisure

Answer 9

Boys’ leisure pursuits such as football and console games do not contribute to developing literacy skills.
On the other hand, girls have a bedroom culture – staying in and talking to friends. This develops communication skills – listening and speaking