‘Chronic’ under-performance of boys at GCSE should be treated as major issue
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/chronic-under-performance-of-boys-at-gcse-should-be-treated-as-major-issue-5Hjd9Pt_2/
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
‘Chronic’ under-performance of boys at GCSE should be treated as major issue
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/chronic-under-performance-of-boys-at-gcse-should-be-treated-as-major-issue-5Hjd9Pt_2/
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
25 Comments
Course work was got rid of because it favoured girls.
The government will probably get rid of GCSEs to solve this.
Some male commentators and politicians have been demanding this for the last few years.
Then they will suddenly complain that boys are underperforming at 18 because they aren’t doing A levels.
Didn’t boys just outperform girls at A Level? Weird contrast.
Should; but won’t, because somehow it’s progressive for boys born today to inherit the sins of men born a century ago.
I work as a private tutor (maths and sciences) – it is very common for boys to do zero revision until the spring before the final exam, and have 150% confidence in their ability to “smash it”. They will often be screaming on their console until mum threatens to take it away or bribes them with extra game time, then come into the lesson beaming as if nothing has happened.
Meanwhile, the girls are knuckling down, revising to a high degree, giving model answers to questions, and still saying “I don’t know, I’m worried I will fail”.
How do you make the horse drink? GCSE results are out next week btw.
I was staggered to see the difference between the teacher assessed grades for boys and girls during COVID compared to the years previous and since. It’s great that girls are thriving at school after being treated as an afterthought in previous centuries but it seems as though it’s now been overcorrected at the expense of boys. Unfortunately, I don’t know what the answer is, but I do wonder if we need to incentivise the profession for males, as there seems to be a lack of male teachers. To be honest, teachers need much better pay in general. I don’t understand the logic in paying them like shit and expecting anything but shit results.
Boys and girls tend to learn differently, and the general systems in place tend to work better for girls’ educative needs and styles versus boys’. There’s also been a good effort to encourage and inspire girls in particular, which should continue- but nothing really for boys. Add to that surrounding issues, and you’ve got a system that doesn’t work for most boys as well as it should
They’ve been saying this for years but nobody has put forth a reason for why boys are underperforming. Plenty of reasons we haven’t fixed it, but none for why it exists in the first place.
Gcses are specifically designed for girls, with a heavy focus on extensive essay writing over knowledge.
Paradoxically it gets a lot easier for boys at uni level where you can pass by learning things.
Naaah let’s teach them about toxic masculinity, infer men are threats, and ignore the lack of male role models in education some more.
A lack of male teachers doesn’t help – studies have shown that boys do better when taught by men, yet men are driven out of the teaching profession by the high risk of false allegations being made against them.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/boys-do-better-when-they-are-taught-by-men-study-finds-946109.html
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/teachers-most-vulnerable-to-false-accusations-according-to-new-research
Jobs that boys typically do are thinning out but we do not yet have mass unemployment. As someone who did their exams during the last big recession, I can vouch that it is a good motivator to over perform. When highly qualified bankers were being made redundant and unable to find work, you are motivated to plan your career carefully and do whatever is necessary to make it. AI and automation tech is doubling in its capabilities every year. Social welfare is being cut back. Inflation exists.
We’ve known that boys are falling behind in education for decades, yet, very little has been done about it.
This isn’t a problem with our ability to perceive the problem, nor is it a problem that we can’t do anything about. Simply put, there is just a lack of political will to remedy it.
I agree obviously but if there’s an opportunity to get a lot of not academically inclined boys into trades that we also chronically lack then perhaps that can be silver lining. They will often make more money doing that as way!
When boy’s/men’s struggles are brought up in Parliament, they’re laughed at. Boys have been failing in education for 30 years – nothing has changed. If you try to help them, you’re smeared as a misogynist. Of course, if one woman was graduating for every two men from university – governments would move heaven and earth to ensure at least 50% of graduates were women. Yet people wonder why boys and young men are turning against feminism …
From living in the UK for a few years, admittedly decades ago, it struck me at the time that doing well in school was perceived as a sissy thing by many boys, who took a certain pride in not doing well at school and not being a swot. Very different attitude from education culture in the countries across the Channel.
I get it, but also boys mess around a lot more on average than girls do, and interest in academic success is less of a priority for boys than girls (again, generally).
One of the issues is using GCSE’s as a measure of success. If we opened technical colleges and vocational pathways from Y9 onwards, you would see behavioural issues in KS4 drop, improvement in attainment (for boys and girls) and those who are just not interested or able to access the KS4 NC actually experience success and achievement in domains related more to their interests and abilities. There would be less classroom disruption, leading to improved learning experiences and you’d end up with a generation of well trained trades.
But that requires money and thought beyond the next election so no government will do it. Instead you have a situation where pupils who are not and will never be academic, forced to fail through GCSEs and forced to fail further as they are made to retake maths and English again and again into post-16. One of the biggest factors contributing to course drop out at post-16 is the policy of making all pupils achieve a pass at GCSE maths and English, with very few post-16 institutions offering functional skills as an option instead and it kills their interests
Just another smokescreen from real issues: cost of living and wealth inequality. Rich always want a new smokescreen for everyone.
The teachers are the problem. There was one writing in the Guardian (can’t remember when, maybe six months ago) explaining why she objected to attempts to help boys, saying that boys had already been given disproportionate favourable treatment by some teachers, and that boys get disruptive and are lazy. The teaching profession is mostly female, and many of them are prejudiced against boys – boys are not their kind of pupils, and they refuse to accommodate boys being different, The fact is that before they changed the way pupils are tested (in the 80s or 90s?), boys had always done better than girls. They changed the system to favour girls, and they are not going accept that they are the ones responsible for boys’ underperformance.
People warned about this years ago when identity politics really started to take off circa 2015.
Teachers are also bigoted towards them, viewing them as a lost cause. Because so many teachers are female, and they subscribe to the same identity, anti-male politics, they have purposefully neglected boys or been indifferent towards them, favouring girls.
Girls also benefit from all sorts of initiatives that boys don’t.
Chiefly, it’s 100x harder being a teenage boy than girl. As a girl, you can just sit there and exist. As a boy, you are fighting your testosterone-fueled impulses, trying to navigate social status, and your emotional needs are completely neglected and suppressed. Girls are allowed to just “have a cry” without shame and all is better.
Girls are under less pressure – if they fail, their future partners won’t mind.
Boys are under more pressure – if they fail, they know society will ostracise them as “losers”, women will be less attracted because we know social status is a major factor for women. Boys are simply crumbling under this pressure, especially without role models.
We need to reallocate support initiatives targeted towards girls to boys. We also need to call out bigotry towards men and boys that is so often used now in casual everyday language.
On average girls study more that’s the only difference
I literally saw this with my own eyes in uni. Would constantly see girls in my year in the library, hardly ever the guys. Was talking with some mates about how we noticed that all but one of the people we knew who failed finals were guys. I wondered why that is, especially because I knew some of them and know they’re smart. And one of the guys said it’s simply that girls just study more.
It really is that simple, unless you’re super smart and have a truly brilliant memory, everyone needs to study somewhat
Possibly it’s that males are less likely to devote excess time to studying and instead want to maintain their normal life and activities whereas girls are more likely to sacrifice their normal life to knuckle down and study. Maybe it’s a maturity thing or a delayed gratification thing or a confidence thing who knows. Girls are more likely to be anxious about failing maybe whereas guys are more easy going. Obv this is all generalisations im just theorising
I feel this as although I’m a woman I think I have more masculine tendancies. I’m pretty lazy the whole year then a few weeks before exams I cram and somehow do well, but I am naturally gifted with a good memory so it works out for me. I just personally struggle with sustained effort for long periods. Although I do ok, I do recognise I would do much better if I actually studied properly but I just can’t make myself do that
It’s shown that men do better on IQ kind of tests, such as the UCAT which is an entrance exam for med school – where you can’t really study for it beyond familiarising yourself with the exam, there’s no content to learn, it just tests reasoning and quick thinking. So if we really wanted to make it fair we could scrap gcses and just give everyone an IQ test.
But isn’t there value in rewarding effort and revision? I would argue someone who’s less naturally intelligent but studies the whole year should get a higher grade than someone more intelligent who doesn’t study. The former is probably going to do better in a job which is what A levels are ultimately for right
You don’t need an education to become a hotel botherer
Maybe we should keep telling them that their intrinsic behaviour is toxic when not exactly aligned with how girls behave. Surely that’ll work if we keep at it.
This conversation means nothing without mention of class and ethnicity. White middle class boys are fine. White privately educated boys are thriving. The ones who are seriously getting left behind (and tbh actually abandoned by society) are white working class boys.
Here are some stats from the ONS that show the % of kids who received free school meals and went on to attend uni, broken down by ethnicity and gender.
Asian/asian British: 61% girls, 46% boys
Black/black British: 62% girls, 43% boys
White: 22% girls, 13% boys.
So white kids from low income background , girls included, are falling behind massively. But yes, boys in all categories are behind girls.
Working class needs to be a protected characteristic, because otherwise all elements of society will give special privilege and opportunities to BAME people (and people who tick other characteristics like sexuality etc).
When the stats show that in the UK, the single most important predictor of how long you will live, how happy your life will be, how healthy you will be, is the socioeconomic background you come from.
It is absolutely by design that liberal politics no longer talks about class.
And instead, because white working class boys therefore turn away from liberal politics (a politics which actively lets them down more then any other group) they are villainised.
It’s easy to be a polite liberal when you’re well off and had a nice education, live comfily some place nice.
If you’re stuck in a deprived area, didn’t attend school, struggling to make ends meet, are you going to say the same socially acceptable liberal things and hold the same beliefs (let’s say, about immigration) as those comfy middle class people?
It might just be the fact boys are brought up more confidently then girls, if a guy and a girl both passed an exam, the girl would be more likely to be more negative about that but the guy would more likely be happy that he just passed. It applys for gcses, guys are less likely to revise as they are more likely to believe’revising means your doubting your ability’ and girls are more likely to revise, and idk if its just me but i have ‘women fought so we could go to school’ at the back of my mind when i’m at school or stuying which is a bit of a driving force
I think the main issues is that families with white-working class background do not see education as a necessary element for the future success of their children, especially if they can go learn a trade (that is normally a male dominated area). This parent’s view is normally shaped by their own experience in school, which was very negative.
It is a shame really, because I have seen really bright boys that can go much further than bricklayers.