BRITAIN SCRAMBLES TO HELP BOYS AS GIRLS SHINE IN SCHOOL
By Yvonne Barlow, Women's Feature Service.
LONDON
Years of boys' supremacy over girls in school grades appear to have ended in
Britain. Exam results over the last 10 years show high school girls outscoring
boys in all subjects, even in the traditional male preserve of math and science.
Teachers and academics offer a variety of reasons for girls leaping ahead of
boys. Among explanations are that boys have fewer role models in schools as
teaching becomes a predominantly female profession, and a government report
points to a move away from the rote memorization of facts to research projects
that require communication skills and long attention spans, traits more commonly
associated with girls.
Professor Charles Desforges, director of the School of Education at Exeter
University, blames fewer jobs in heavy industry and says feminization of the
workplace is causing disillusionment among men. "Increasing numbers of women are
taking jobs traditionally occupied by men, and boys are losing motivation,"
Desforges says.
The British media have criticized the "boys behaving badly" culture in
Britain. Behavior such as underage drinking, fighting and ditching school to
attend out-of-town games is so widespread that top soccer teams such as Bristol
City have teamed up with local schools to convince boys that learning is
important. Editorial writers have come out against "lager louts" who view
learning as "sissy," blaming this "soccer culture" for demotivating boys at
school.
Whatever the reasons, boys are becoming the underdogs of education. Last
year's national exams for 15-year-old students showed 51 percent of girls passed
at least five subjects compared to 41 percent of boys. Girls also topped boys in
younger age groups.
These results, which channel children toward employment or university, have
set off alarms in the government. Schools are now required to come up with
action plans to tackle boys' under-achievement, efforts are under way to attract
more men to teaching, and last summer the government announced funding for pilot
projects in four cities to improve boys' reading.
"Failure to raise the educational achievement of boys will mean that
thousands of young men will face a bleak future in which a lack of
qualifications and basic skills will mean unemployment and little hope of
finding work," said Stephen Byers, school standards minister.
Many schools are rushing toward experiments in segregating classes along
gender lines and mentoring boys at risk of failing. Richard Heath, deputy
headmaster at Witchford College, a school for 11- to 17-year-olds in
Cambridgeshire, said changes to the school curriculum in the 1980s have been
hard on boys. There is less emphasis on tests and more attention
to research projects, and that puts boys at a disadvantage, he said.
"Girls naturally organize themselves, but boys leave it to the last minute,"
Heath said.
Teachers at the school now break long projects into specific steps such as
research, study and writing assignments to ensure boys don't get left behind.
The school is also changing the fiction list pupils are required to read in the
hope that boys will be more interested in books, and teachers now place pupils
in boy-girl pairs so that boys will be influenced by the girls' study habits.
The government has said that efforts to help boys should not have a negative
impact on girls. "It is vital that policies aimed at disaffected boys are not
introduced at the expense of girls, whose improvement over recent years has been
a real success story," Byers said.
Some educators fear techniques used to encourage boys could be detrimental to
girls. For instance, mentoring programs that single out failing boys take up a
lot of teaching time and divert staff from the main student body. Witchford
College gave up its mentoring program as too staff-intensive.
Janette Elwood, an education researcher at London University's Institute of
Education, said deliberately putting boys next to girls creates distraction for
girls. But this hasn't happened at Witchford College, Heath said. The school
began using boy-girl pairings 15 months ago, and the rate of passing this year's
national exams jumped 8 percent for boys and girls. Girls at Witchford College
say they're doing better because they work harder
than boys. "Girls don't get teased by other girls for being clever," said
Natalie Richardson, 14. Many boys agreed, saying it is OK to do well
occasionally, but a boy who consistently earns high marks risks being called a
"boffin," a derisive word for studious. Boys tend to goof off more, said Stephen
Parish, 14. "It's not that boys are less intelligent," said Scott Forster, 14.
"It's just that they're more easily distracted." To
Elwood, the national anguish over boys is a little unfair. "There has never been
a celebration of girls' success. Instead it's been, `What can we do about
boys?'" The government has introduced policies and increased funding to help
boys at school, but this was never done when girls were trailing boys in
education, she pointed out. "Feminist groups pushed for equality for girls. But
now, with boys, it's almost part of legislation, and it's interesting how panic
has come through."
Desforges agreed but emphasized that boys' underachievement must be tackled. "It
has the makings of a major social problem with increasing numbers of males
underqualified, unemployed and unoccupied with all the knock-on effect it might
generate. We can give three cheers for the girls, but get the cheers over
quickly so we can knock out the problem."
Some educators pointed out that the number of boys passing national exams has
been increasing over the years, but girls have been passing in even greater
numbers. "Girls, in my experience, work harder, are more diligent and
conscientious," Desforges said. "Whether this is natural or can be put down to
cultural upbringing, I don't know."
Jim Graham, an education researcher and former school headmaster, attributed
some of the problem to gender differences. "The young male ego is more volatile,
more vulnerable than the female ego," Graham said. "And of all the things
leading to failure, lack of confidence is top."
Elwood said equal opportunities for women in the workplace had filtered down to
schoolgirls. "The expectations are changing," she said. "Girls are seem to be
needing qualifications and to be able to support themselves and be independent."
Louise Plumb, 14, observed: "You know you've got to work hard. You've got to
take care of yourself."
Forwarded by edequity-admin@mail.edc.org
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