Gender and Education

Question 1

What are some of the general trends in relation to gender and educational achievement.

Give at least three examples.

Answer 1

At least three from the following:

• Both boys and girls have a raised level of achievement.
• Girls have higher educational achievement compared to boys.
• The achievement of girls has seen a rapid increase.
• Gender patterns are slow to change in terms of subject choice.
• There is evidence that schools reinforce gender stereotypes.

Question 2

Give at least two examples of official statistics for gender and educational achievement, on starting school.

Answer 2

• 2013 assessments - showed that at the end of year one, girls were ahead of boys in all seven areas of assessed learning.
• Girls were better than boys at concentrating.
• Dfe (2013) study - at state primary schools, boys were two and a half times more likely to have statements of educational needs.

Question 3

Give at least two examples of official statistics for gender and educational achievement, at Key Stages 1-3

Answer 3

• Girls have consistently higher educational achievement than boys.
• In English, the achievement gap steadily widens with age.
• In science and maths, the gap is narrower, but girls still do better.

Question 4

What is the trend in educational achievement between boys and girls at GCSE level?

Answer 4

• The gender and achievement gap stands at around 10 percentage points.

Question 5

Give at least two examples of official statistics for gender and educational achievement, at AS and A-level

Answer 5

• Girls are more likely to sit, pass and achieve higher grades than boys.
• The gap in achievement of boys and girls is much lower than it is at GCSE.
• 2013 - 46.8% of girls gained A or B grades, but only 42.2% of boys.
• Even in ‘boys’ subjects, such as physics and maths, girls were more likely to achieve grades A-C.

Question 6

Give two examples of official statistics for gender and educational achievement, on vocational courses.

Answer 6

• Shows a similar pattern.
• A larger proportion of girls achieve a distinction in every subject including construction and engineering, where girls are a tiny majority of the students.

Question 7

What are the external factors that impact on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 7

• Impact of Feminism
• Changes in the Family
• Changes in women’s employment
• Changes in girls perceptions

Question 8

How has the impact of feminism impacted on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 8

• Feminist movement has challenged the traditional stereotypes of women being solely housewives and mothers.
• Feminism has raised women’s expectations and self-esteem about themselves.
• Has led to girls having better images about their career and the family, and this could explain the improvements in their educational achievement.

Question 9

How have changes in the family impacted on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 9

• Major changes in the family since the 1960s (increased divorce rate, increase in popularity of cohabitation, decrease in the number of first marriages, trend towards smaller families, and an increase in the number of lone parent families).
• These changes have affected girls’ attitudes towards education in the following ways:
  1) Lone parent family increase - more women need to work and take on the role of the breadwinner.
  2) Increase the role model for girls - to achieve this role model for their children, women need well paid jobs and therefore good qualifications.
  3) Increase in divorce rate - increasing idea that it is unwise to rely on your husband to be the provider. May encourage girls to look to themselves and their own qualifications to make a living.

Question 10

How have changes in women’s employment impacted on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 10

• 1970 Equal Pay Act - illegal for women to be paid less than men for work of the same value.
• 1975 Sex Discrimination Act - outlaws discrimination at work.
• Since 1975 - pay gap between men and women has halved from 30% to 15%.
• The growth of flexible, part-time work has offered more opportunities for women.
• Some women are now breaking through the ‘glass ceiling’ - the invisible barrier that keeps women out of high-level professional and managerial jobs.
• These changes have encouraged girls to see their future in terms of paid work, rather than in terms of housewives.
• Career opportunities, better pay for women and the role models that successful women offer, provides and incentive for girls to gain qualifications.

Question 11

What are examples of internal factors that could impact on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 11

• Equal opportunities policies
• Positive role models in schools
• GCSEs and coursework
• Teacher attention
• Challenging stereotypes in the curriculum
• Selection and league tables

Question 12

How could equal opportunities policies impact on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 12

• Policy makers are much more aware of gender issues.
• Teachers are more sensitive to the need to avoid stereotyping as a result of feminism.
• The idea that boys and girls are entitled to the same opportunities, is now part of mainstream thinking, and it influences policies.
• Introduction of national curriculum (1988) - removed once source of gender inequality by making boys and girls study mostly the same subjects, which was not the case previously.

Question 13

How could positive role models in school impact on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 13

• Increase in the proportion of female teachers and headteachers.
• This women in senior roles may act as role models for girls, showing them that women can achieve positions of importance, and giving them non-traditional roles to aim for.
• Female teachers are likely to be important role models for girls, as for the teacher to become a teacher, she must undergo a lengthy and successful education herself.

Question 14

How could GCSEs and coursework impact on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 14

• The fact that the use of oral exams has increased. This is likely to benefit girls because girls generally have better developed language skills.
• Girls are more likely to be encouraged to be neat and tidy, and these qualities are an advantage when it comes to the school assessment system, helping girls to achieve more highly than boys.

Question 15

How might teacher interaction impact on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 15

• The way in which teachers interact with boys and girls differs.
• Teachers respond more positively to girls, who they see as cooperative than boys, who they see as potentially disruptive. This may lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which successful interactions with teachers promote girls’ self esteem and raise their achievement levels.

Question 16

How could changing stereotypes in the curriculum impact on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 16

• Some sociologists argue that the removal of gender stereotypes from textbooks, reading schemes and other learning materials in recent years, has removed a barrier in girls’ achievement.
• Research in the 1970s and 1980s found that reading schemes portrayed women as mainly housewives and mothers.
• Physics books showed them as frightened as science, and maths books showed boys as inventive.

Question 17

How might selection and league tables impact on gender and educational achievement?

Answer 17

• Marketisation policies have created a competitive climate in which schools see girls as desirable recruits because they achieve better exam results.

Question 18

How would liberal feminists evaluate the achievement of girls?

Answer 18

• Celebrate the progress made so far in improving achievement.
• Believe that further progress will be made by continuing the development of equal opportunities policies, encouraging positive role models and overcoming sexist attitudes and stereotypes.
• Their view is similar to the functionalist view that education is a meritocracy where all individuals, regardless of gender, ethnicity or class are given an equal opportunity to achieve.

Question 19

How would radical feminists evaluate the achievement of girls?

Answer 19

• Take a more critical view.
• While they recognise that girls are achieving more, they emphasise the system remains patriarchal and conveys the clear message that it is still a mans world.

For example:

• Sexual harassment still continues at school.
• Education still limits girls’ subject choices and career options.
• Although there are now more female head teachers, male teachers are still more likely to become heads of secondary schools.
• Women are underrepresented in many areas of the curriculum. For example, their contribution to history is largely ignored.

Question 20

What has happened to the achievement of boys?

Answer 20

• There have been rising concerns that boys are falling behind in their educational achievement.

Question 21

What factors may be responsible for boys and educational achievement?

Answer 21

• Boys and literacy
• Globalisation and the decline of traditional men’s jobs
• Feminisation of education
• Shortage of male primary school teachers

Question 22

Why might the literacy skills of boys impact on their educational achievement?

Answer 22

• According to the DCSF (2007) the gender gap is mainly as a result of boys’ poorer literacy and language skills.
• One reason for this may be the fact that parents spend less time reading to their sons.
• Another reason may be that it is mothers that do most of the reading to young children, so boys come to see reading as feminist.

Question 23

Why might globalisation and the decline of traditional men’s jobs impact on the educational achievement of boys?

Answer 23

• Since the 1980s there has a significant decline in heavy industries such as iron and steel, shipbuilding, mining, and engineering. This has been partly the result of the globalisation of the economy, which has led to much of the manufacturing industry relocating to developing countries such as China to take advantage of cheap labour.
• Traditionally, these sectors mainly employed men.
• Many boys now believe they have little prospect of getting a proper job. This undermines their motivation and self esteem, so they give up trying to gain qualifications.

Question 24

How might the shortage of male primary school teachers impact on the educational achievement of boys?

Answer 24

• The lack of male role models at home and at school is said to be a cause of boys underachievement. For example, large numbers of boys are being raised in the 1.5 million female headed lone parent families in the UK.
• Only 14% of primary school teachers are male.
• This may impact on the educational achievement of boys because, in a survey from YouGov (2007), said that male teacher presence made them behave better and work harder, and if there is a lack of male teachers, it is likely that boys won’t work as hard as they could, and therefore not achieve as highly as their full potential would allow.
• Some sociologists would argue that this is due to the fact that education has become feminised, due to large numbers of female teachers, and female teachers are unable to control teachers.
• Male teachers are better able to impose the strict discipline that boys need in order to concentrate. However, the problem with this is the fact that if there are not very many male teachers, the concentration levels of boys are likely to be lower, increasing the likelihood of boys underachieving.

Question 25

What could impact on gender and subject choice?

Answer 25

• Career aspirations
• Role models
• ‘masculine’ vs ‘feminine’ subjects
• Confidence due to gender socialisation
• Limited subject choices - sports academies tend to be aimed more towards boys.

Question 26

What are the trends in gender and subject choice?

Answer 26

• Girls are more likely to choose subjects such as modern languages, for example.
• Boys tend to opt for subjects such as maths and physics.
• There continues to be a pattern of ‘boys’ subjects and ‘girls’ subjects.
• Where there is a choice in the national curriculum, boys and girls choose differently. For example, although design and technology is a compulsory subject, girls tend to choose food technology and boys choose graphics.
• Gendered subject choices become more noticeable after the age of 16.
• There are big differences in the A-level subjects that boys and girls choose. Boys tend to choose maths and physics and girls tend to choose subjects such as sociology, English and languages. These changes are mirrored at university.
• These gendered patterns are not new. The Institute of Physics (2012) found that the proportion of female physics students has been ‘stubbornly consistent at around 20% for over 20 years.
• Gender segregation is noticeable on vocational courses. Only 1/100 childcare apprentices are male.

Question 27

What are some of the explanations for the trends in gender and subject choice?

Answer 27

• Early socialisation
• Subject image
• Peer pressure - boys tend to opt out of music and dance, as such subjects fall out of their gender domain, and boys are more likely to be bullied if they do choose these subjects.
• Career opportunities :
  1) employment is highly gendered.
  2) jobs similar to the role of a housewife are often chosen by women (childcare, catering, nursing, for example)
  3) This affects young children’s ideas of what jobs are possible. If boys are socialised to believe nursing is for women, then they are less likely to opt for health and social care vocational courses. This explains why vocational courses are more gender specific than academic courses since they are linked to careers.

Question 28

How does the school experience reinforce gender identity?

Answer 28

• Double standards:

1) This is where one set of morals are applied to one group, but a different set to another group.
2) Feminists see these double standards as an example of patriarchal ideology that justifies male power and devalues women.

• Verbal abuse
• The male gaze - the visual way in which pupils control each others identities.
• Male peer groups - these often use verbal abuse to reinforce their identity.
• Teacher interaction and discipline