I've been looking at the list of children I'm teaching in September and once again, the highest achieving children in Maths are all boys. Every single one. Don't get me wrong, they're nice boys, but I'm so frustrated and really wondering why this is the case.
Two things stand out to me.
- At parents' evenings, its crazy how many mums tell me "she's not great at Maths, I never was either. She's more into her writing." And they're talking about intelligent girls with bags of potential.
- I find many of the girls I've taught struggle when it comes to investigations and open ended challenges. It comes with practice, but I do get the impression many of them would just prefer to have a nice page of sums where they can get a nice set of green ticks...
I was talking to a colleague today who claimed it's simply the fact that girls and boys are wired differently, which I totally disagree with, but I felt I couldn't give a coherent argument in return.
Can anyone, teachers or not, shed any light on this or offer any comment? For the record, I'm very proud of my Maths teaching and put a lot of time into making interesting lessons with a wide range of challenge, and our results are great.