gender and differential achievement in education

Question 1

What are four facts about gender and differential achievement?

Answer 1

• girls get better results in primary school National Curriculum tests.
• girls get better results in nearly every subject at GCSE
• girls are more likely to pass their A-Levels
• More women than men go on to university in the UK.

Question 2

What factors inside school explain why females now do better?

Answer 2

• Mitsos and Browne (1998) say teaching has been feminised. women are more likely to be classroom teachers, especially in primary schools, giving positive role models to girls.
• Textbooks and teaching resources have changed and are less likely to stereotype girls into passive roles.
• National Curriculum forced girls to do traditionally ‘male’ subjects. WISE (women in Science and Engineering) and GIST (girls into science and technology)
• Jackson (1998) says that schools label boys negatively. Boys are associated with poor behaviour, which gives the school a bad name, and with low achievement, which lowers the school’s league table positions. This negative label becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Question 3

What does Archer (2006) say about females still facing problems at school?

Answer 3

Archer (2006) argues that the current underachievement by boys in education masks the continuing problems that girls still face.
- she claims that high-achieving Asian and Chinese girls get negatively labelled by teachers as robots who are incapable of independent thought.
- she also argues that black working-class girls are negatively labelled as loud and aggressive.
- she concludes that the ongoing achievement of girls is ‘fragile and problematic’.

Question 4

What factors outside of school explain why females now do better?

Answer 4

• policies such as the equal pay act and sex discrimination act have helped to create more equal opportunities in the wider society. this has changed the values of society and attitudes in school.

Question 4

What factors outside of school explain why females now do better?

Answer 4

• policies such as the equal pay act and sex discrimination act have helped to create more equal opportunities in the wider society. this has changed the values of society and attitudes in school.
• the feminist movement caused a change in female expectations, and made more people aware of inequality.
• Changes in the labour market have created opportunities for women. since the 1970s, there has been a continual increase in the size of the service sector, which is traditionally female-dominated, and a shrinking of the primary sector which is traditionally male-dominated.
• changes in family structure have changed female aspirations. on average, women now marry and have children later in life, so they can pursue a career first.

Question 5

What did Sue Sharpe (1994) find?

Answer 5

She found that girls’ priorities have changed. they now want careers and qualifications. More women go out to work, so girls see positive role models in work. Girls nowadays often want to be financially independent.

Question 6

What are some reasons why some boys underachieve?

Answer 6

• boys may be having an identity crisis. the rise of female independence, the decline of the breadwinner role for men and the rise of male unemployment might mean that boys don’t see the point of education. This may lead to anti-school subcultures.
• Interpretivists say that teachers have lower expectations of boys. May lead to self-fulfilling prophecy.
• the feminisation of teaching means that boys don’t have as many role models in the classroom.
• reading can be seen as ‘girly’. Boys who avoid books may not develop vital communication skills.

Question 7

How can subcultures help to explain gender and achievement?

Answer 7

• In the 1970s Willis looked at why working-class kids get working-class jobs. He studied a group of boys later called “willis’s lads”. The lads rejected school and formed an anti-school subculture. they coped with their own underachievement by having a subculture where education didn’t matter, and where having a laugh was more important.
• Mac an Ghaill (1994) says that subcultures are complicated. There are lots of different types. Boys may join a macho lad subculture because of a crisis of masculinity. But boys could also join pro-school subcultures and be proud of academic achievement.
• Fuller (1980) studied a group of African-Caribbean girls in London who formed a subculture that worked hard to prove negative labelling wrong.