Just completing some Equality Act 'training' and apparently I got this question wrong...

I don't really have a problem with the question, it seems tome like it's been worded to make the reader question their assumptions. The correct answer is false, that's how "and" questions work.

As for why some groups out-perform, bias can be a factor but I would say there is pretty ample reason in some cases to think it can be related to all kinds of other things, like cultural differences. Men out-earning in the workplace is largely down to reproductive role. And there is some real evidence that boys performing less at school may start in early years education where a poor start tends to follow students along through the years, and where young starting ages for school are a disadvantage to boys who are on average later to mature in that age group - though that's not the only factor by an means.

Where are we on the girls'-brains-maturing-earlier-and-having-more-neural-connections-than-boys research at the moment? I can never keep up. As soon as one study has declared there's no difference between boys' and girls' brains there seems to be another stating that girls have a neurological advantage during key educational years, after which boys catch up.

Sounds like a really poorly worded question to me.

I agree that there probably are areas in education where girls have an advantage - especially in primary school, where the typical socialisation of girls encourages them to be good and quiet and sit still and act in a way that pleases teachers. Other areas, like having only terminal exams, might favour boys. So I don't think it's possible to say that there is a statistical advantage for either during education, because those things can't be as easily measured. Using exam performance as the proxy measure for advantage is problematic for many reasons, even if it is true that girls statistically perform better - that's still not what is being asked.

So it's a badly written question.

So many people who are involved in writing assessments and surveys don't seem to have had much training in writing good, unambiguous questions that measure what they are hoping to find out.

I am participating in a Covid survey from UCL, who you'd hope would train their researchers well. It's also poorly written. It's full of questions where you have to mark a sentence like "I become extremely upset when I think about past events" with a frequency of 'never, rarely, sometimes, often, usually'. I can tell from the other questions that they are looking not just for how often you become 'extremely' upset, but that they actually want you to rank the level of how upset you are, from 'mildly' to 'extremely'. But that's not what the question says. (Not the exact words/topic as the real questionnaire, but the style of question - a statement with an intensifier already in it, and then asking you to rank something based on levels of the intensifier).

There are whole fields of study on statistics and question writing, and it seems training courses and researchers don't actually look into it.

“According to UCAS, by 2015, an 18-year old woman was 35 per cent more likely to enter higher education than an 18-year old man. This means 36,000 fewer 18-year old men entered higher education than if the rates for men and women had been equal.”

The greater appetite for higher education among women is rational in financial terms because the financial returns from higher education have been larger for women than for men. But this gap is not due to female graduates earning more: in fact, they earn less on average. It is due to non- graduate women typically earning significantly less than non-graduate men.

Also:

Men still outperform women in some of the most prestigious areas – such as entry to the highest-tariff institutions, to Science and Engineering courses and to research degrees. Moreover, on some indicators, men have better employment outcomes. Six months after leaving higher education, women are more likely to be in work but men are more likely to be in professional occupations. Among those with jobs, men also earn higher incomes on average.

So a gender pay gap from the get go.

www.hepi.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Boys-to-Men.pdf

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@WarOnWomen
Your point? I agree/know Asians have higher attainment levels, but I am saying that it is because we have advantage of positive racism. Have you never hear of positive racism before?

Why do you think we do better? Do you think we are naturally...what? Harder working? More intelligent?[/quote]
I am saying that better teaching (or lack of) cannot account for boys not attaining at the same level as girls. Similarly, it cannot account for the differences in attainment for white/minority ethnic groups because attainment differs amongst us too. The white traveller communities' attainments also highlight this.

It was a stupid question.
The fact that girl's superior performance at exams is being put down to working harder is interesting. Girls are being told they aren't really intelligent or gifted but just slog away at it. Boys, however can fail exams because they're a gifted, unconventional, non confirming genius. Imagine if it was the other way round, if boys were passing the exams it would be put down to innate superiority.

One of the issue with the performance gap is language skills, boys who don't do sustained reading for pleasure often suffer but often reading is seen as a girly activity no real boy would do. This is a disadvantage created by an advantage, the male genius theory which gives middling boys a sense of superiority.

I remember the whole 11+ positive discrimination debacle- now that really was giving a structural advantage.

Females are statistically more likely to be agreeable therefore conformist, which is an advantage at school.
Males are more likely to be risk takers and less conscientious, which is a disadvantage at school.

The differences are small but significant enough to create differing outcomes.

The view on here seems to be that the differences are entirely cultural and could be trained out if we provided the right environment.
Who knows?

What we do know is differences exist and they provide advantages and disadvantages in different ways in different contexts.

There is no such thing as systemic sexism or racism in the education system affecting the outcomes whatsoever. It’s a perfect meritocracy based on hard work. Ok. Got it. Leaving the thread now.

Leaving without justifying why you think “advantage” pertains only to academic performance and outcomes, rather than all the other aspects of education in which women are disadvantaged, and not addressing the disadvantage at Ph.D level either. You’ve focused on one area of “education” and neglected the rest.

You didn’t read the article. It included a study on how work tasks are assigned to Asians clearly based on racial stereotypes

I did read it. It didn't provide any evidence that this happens in education or the workplace. It only showed that in studies, where they made that happen, it had poor outcomes.

Do you think girls work harder at school because they're socialised to be people pleasers, where as the "boys will be boys" attitude is still very prevalent in society? Just thinking back to my school days.

Yes you’re all correct.
Girls/women achieve higher attainment by working twice as hard as the lazy boys/men. 🙄 (sarcasm)

And Asian people, like myself, achieve the higher attainment by being harder working than other races. 🙄 (sarcasm)

There is no such thing as systemic sexism or racism in the education system affecting the outcomes whatsoever. It’s a perfect meritocracy based on hard work. Ok. Got it. Leaving the thread now.

What a poorly worded question. Even splitting it into two questions e.g.

1. Statistically men and boys have an advantage in in the workplace over women and girls. True/ false

2. Statistically, men and boys have an advantage in education over women and girls. True/ false.

Results in equally poorly worded question, no account of age, social background or ethic background just to name a few variables. Ridiculous.

However, with the original question the answer is indeed false if you use Boolean algebra...as only one statement is true so it has to be false. (That is the extent of my knowledge as am earwigging conversations on A-level computer science.)

Still a lazy question.

Girls have an advantage because they work harder.
Asian students have advantage because they work harder.

The interesting question is why. Why do girls and Asian children work harder than say white boys?
There will be many cultural reasons which place one group in a position to maximise educational opportunity whilst other groups don't make choices to invest in education, which is of course a disadvantage.

Yes men on average get paid more which is an advantage. The question again is why. Which will have multifaceted biological and cultural reasons one factor of which may be discrimination.

The logical flip flopping between unequal outcomes are/ aren't a problem of unfairness and women are disadvantaged both when their outcomes are higher and lower then mens is incredible to watch here.

Not sure why the differences are positioned as being more intelligent/hard-working vs being less intelligent/lazy, given this is FWR, socialisation of children will encourage behaviours which will be advantageous in certain areas but not others.

[quote VanGoghsDog]@PlanDeRaccordement

Yes, I'm aware that stereotypes are bad.

None of that answers the question I asked.[/quote]
You didn’t read the article. It included a study on how work tasks are assigned to Asians clearly based on racial stereotypes

As for men getting paid more than women because of motherhood, the pay gap just widens after motherhood and is not caused by it.

Not true. From 18-39, the gender pay gap is less than 1%, which is statistically insignificant. That fraction 1% is due fewer women having children young. It is only after age 40, when vast majority mothers return to the workforce that the pay gap appears at a high 11.2%

@PlanDeRaccordement

Yes, I'm aware that stereotypes are bad.

None of that answers the question I asked.

I am lost - what "advantage" do girls have in education over boys? Statistically they may do better at school than boys (ie come out with higher marks/more exams) but is that due to an inbuilt advantage in the system or is it for another reason (eg they work harder)? As far as I can see, girls in a mixed sex school have to put up with lots of badly behaved boys (in my dds' case they had to sit next to naughty boys in junior school because they were well-behaved so that was helpful!), they often have to put up with hearing rubbish about girls not being good at maths/sciences (or unconscious bias around this), in secondary school they have to put up with all sorts of sexism from fellow pupils, in some cases they spend ages doing make up/on beauty regimes (time that could be spent working) etc etc.
I am genuinely interested on where an education system (which I assume was set up by men for boys) is institutionally biased in favour of girls.

I just find it a really badly worded question. Advantage, performance and measuring success on pay are different things to me, but then I tend to overthink things like this.

For me personally I know a lot of people who have been very successful without what we would conventionally see as 'advantage'. Conversely I know a lot of people who've had advantage over others who have been less successful given the measure used on this question and answer.

Here is an article on the harm of this stereotype and how it operates.

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201302/the-pain-positive-stereotypes

Lol. Love how all “Asians” are lumped together but when it comes to how white people perform, it’s sliced down to the subgroup of “working class white boys” why not compare “Asians” to rich white girls?

How does this positive racism towards Asian people manifest in an education and work environment?

@WarOnWomen
Your point? I agree/know Asians have higher attainment levels, but I am saying that it is because we have advantage of positive racism. Have you never hear of positive racism before?

Why do you think we do better? Do you think we are naturally...what? Harder working? More intelligent?

Firstly, there are many studies that prove boys are favoured in mixed sex education settings, so girls aren't taught better.
Secondly, schools analyse data carefully when allocating provision. It's looked at on an individual, school wide and nation wide level. So no girls don't get more 1:1, but they might be allocated 1:1 if a particular cohort shows girls are falling behind.
I deliver 1:1 as well as group intervention. It's very rare for girls to be as non compliant as boys, where I might get a chair thrown at me because they don't want to do catch up maths.

"Just insert white people...
the fact that white children perform better in school and university doesn’t mean they have an advantage"

But that doesn't work because it's not true. Pupils from an Asian background perform the best and white working class boys perform the worst. So, if anything, that just supports the point that advantage doesn't equal better performance.