Why are over 80% of school suspensions boys?

[ZenAgainWoo]

Watched a tv show not long ago looking at children who have been suspended from school, and I think it stated that near 85% of school suspensions are boys. Why is this? Am I missing something glaringly obvious?

It's nature and nurture.

I essentially have a 'boy' if stereotypes are to be believed. Classic flavour ADHD girl actually. She had to be managed, properly exercised and fed, lots of behaviour modification. If she'd been a boy the school would have been totes fine with her.

Expectations are low for boys. But they are bigger and have more testosterone. So need to be managed well.

Best teacher DD had for the boys in the class was an A type exercise nut. He used to make them run laps of the school when they were arsey. And it worked.

Antisocial Personality Disorder in some cases.

*Effects of antisocial personality disorder
Criminal behaviour is a key feature of antisocial personality disorder, and there's a high risk that someone with the disorder will commit crimes and be imprisoned at some point in their life.

Men with antisocial personality disorder have been found to be 3 to 5 times more likely than women to misuse alcohol and drugs than those without the disorder. They also have an increased risk of dying prematurely as a result of reckless behaviour or attempting suicide.

People with antisocial personality disorder are also more likely to have relationship problems during adulthood and be unemployed and homeless.*

www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/antisocial-personality-disorder/#:~:text=Antisocial%20personality%20disorder%20is%20a,care%20for%20other%20people's%20feelings.

The boys will be boys attitude is indeed toxic.
I don't have that and my sons father has been absent for 13yrs. DS is ultra sensible and I've tried to make sure he avoided friendship with the "boys will be boys" type of families.

See, my dd is such a pioneer! Well behaved women rarely make history 😆😆😆

1. testosterone affects behaviour - bulls, stags have more aggressive behaviour.
2. the consequences of male violence are worse because they are bigger and stronger (eg girl shoving someone vs bit shoving someone). So a violent male at school is on average more dangerous to others than a violent female.

I guess there might be other reasons too like poorer discipline on boys or boys being encouraged to be more violent (eg by peers and family).

I think the lack of good male role models in many boys lives has an impact.

And the presence of a bad one. I see single mums being preyed on by absolute arseholes. We need to stop pretending women need men around. A good man, certainly. But no man is vastly preferable to a bad one.

I think SEN has a part to play here too, girls are generally better at masking than boys

I think the fact that so many more men go on to be violent is a reason why we need to change the culture that we are bringing boys up in. We need to try to get to the root of the issues much sooner and stop writing off behaviour as “boys will be boys”

Which in itself can also cause massive issues down the line in a different way. Undiagnosed or unsupported special needs, or being made to spend life masking, can lead to many women struggling massively with mental health.

Yep

"boys will be boys" - boys allowed to get away with more than girls at a younger age, especially physical behaviour.

Two female siblings wrestling each other would be told off, two male siblings doing the same it's just considered to be normal behaviour/play fighting.

Oh god Jordan Peterson had the most perfect quote to explain this and I’ve got to try and remember it.

Toxic masculinity.

Here are some examples from my experience this week:

• boy called a mixed race child a ‘monkey’.
• boy had to be excluded because he admitted he was going to hunt down another students and smash his face in (after having already done the same the week before)
• boy burst into a classroom and shouted that the teacher was a horrible prick (not the kids teacher or class).
• boy smashed a plate glass window by pushing another child into it.
• boy given a one day exclusion for calling a female staff member a see you next Tuesday.

on the girls side there is a lot of loitering in toilets, lateness to class and rudeness. Much less physical violence.

We did have a girl excluded this half term for putting a video of a staff member on Tick Tock and sharing it with her friends.

Behaviour come out differently. The girls are much, much more of a safeguarding concern though. I must fill out double the safe guarding referrals for girls than boys.

And that is just one week. I don’t even hear the half of it and none of that is anywhere near the worst thing that has happened this year.

I teach in an outstanding school in a very nice rural area.

Boys do more stupid shit to impress their mates or get egged on by each other and caught up in the moment. Boys are more violent. School is harder for boys.

Because boys learn early on that they have the right to do whatever they want as they're male, misogyny is still a real issue. Boys are fed messages from a young age about being tough so when they do have issues they turn to violence.

My son is 11 and a sweet, soft soul which sadly has made him a target for a particularly nasty boy (who is twice his size). This boy knocked my son over and stomped on his head on the playground causing injuries and an ongoing mental health/anxiety disorder due to this. The boy in question wasnt suspended, however I suspect like his older brother once he goes to secondary school he will end up expelled.

Their dad was violent and their Mum is more interested in her hair and nails than actually parenting. Just setting the kids up to fail. She has 4 more boys to go through the school system, I bet the teachers cant wait.

No I can’t find it. It was something along the lines of girls make themselves miserable and boys make everyone else miserable. So when girls are depressed or angry they tend to internalise their sadness by self punishment in the form of eating disorders or self harm. Boys on the other hand tend to lash out at the world and become anti social which impacts others (and eventually gets them expelled).

I've never been sexually harassed by a female student but I have by male students many times, including a rape threat, each boy got FTE'd for a few days.

I've never separated a physical fight between female students but have between male students many times.

Male behaviour in schools can be awful and toxic masculinity is a huge problem at the moment.

I find it hard to believe that these suspensions and crimes and prison sentences are due to boys/men being raised differently than girls/women.

Do you? I don't. It's a bit of nature (testosterone probably) and lots of nurture/social influence imo. Girls behave badly too, but often in a less obvious, disruptive, physical, confrontational or out-of-control way. From my personal experience though, I'd say the behaviour of the very worst-behaved girls has begun to be more similar to the bad behaviour of boys over the last few years, and the proportion of girls on detention lists and in inclusion has gone up a bit too. But still not approaching the number of boys.

higher testosterone as a start mixed with not having the correct parenting or role model to teach them how to handle their behaviour / emotions.

Men and women are not "wired the same" they, do not have the same hormones, they do not have the same physique. For hundreds of thousands of years males have been pretty much bred for aggression/defense. Add to that the affect of socialisation and culture which rewards highly assertive men, and idolises male aggression and holds men/boys to lower standards of behaviour and ~voila!

Absolutely this. As a female teacher I feel intimidated by some upper school boys. Some of them revel in intimidating female staff and taking control of lesson.

misogyny is rife and goes unchallenged by the mostly male SLT.

It's because boys are allowed to get away with so much bad behaviour before they are pulled up on it that they no longer care about what's right or wrong, they just care about impressing their friends. If teachers/parents were as strict on boys as they are on girls this wouldn't be happening.

MrsTerryPratchett

Totally agree there is an element here of boys being not well challenged over bad behaviour in primary and early secondary. Its not all the story but is a definite part of the story

Eg Theo smashes little alfie's face in say yr5 or 6 the school response - lets sit down with some juice and biscuits so Theo can understand from alfie just how upset alfie is so then Theo can understand how alfie feels and he wont do it again. Though the truth is Theo knew very well what he was doing and did it deliberately in order to upset alfie and Theo will go off and do it again and again to various kids because really what is there to stop him when all the punishment he gets is sitting down for a chat and missing 5 minutes of his break time?

To the point some boys are out of control with no sufficient boundaries and when they get to secondary they take it too far then are surprised that the school actually punishes them with a suspension. Because they have spent 7-9 years being bullies and never been punished before and know no real boundaries.