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?

Testosterone.

Safeguarding how? This is interesting

Also boys are NOT encouraged to suppress their emotions. They are encouraged to express anger as the main emotion. Anger is very acceptable in boys and very unacceptable in girls. Girls are encouraged to suppress the emotion of anger.

@swishyskirt

CSE- it happens to both boys and girls but much more predominantly girls. Every school has at least some cases. It’s not just huge rings in major cities. Kids are trafficked to London from all over the country by smaller gangs who are quite difficult to catch and groomed for sexual relationships by men in their twenties. And we now have the overall nightmare that is nudes, revenge porn and social media. The number of incidents is so staggering that we’ve had to hire an extra person specially to deal with the extra safeguarding referrals.

I shudder every time a thread comes up involving teens unrestricted access to social
media via smart phones. If only parents knew what was happening (and not just isolated incidents but widespread across the country) then they wouldn’t do it. I can’t think of a single positive thing to come out of putting teenage girls on social media.

People shrug it off and say they know but they really have no idea.

I think that it's very interesting that people assume that schools are set up for girls who like to be quiet and find it easy to sit and concentrate for long periods. Far from the truth. It's just that girls don't really have a choice - there are consequences for girls who don't do this. Far more acceptable when boys don't. And by five, girls and boys have both been taught that social pressure will be applied to girls and they had better knuckle down.

I also find it interesting that many people think that boys don't do psychological bullying and only girls do. Again, it's because of stereotypes. We expect girls to do it and we see it because we look, but it's ignored when boys do it.

I agree that boys psychologically bully. Intimidation such as staring, ostracising, "joky" comments - its only banter, are all very common examples. But they are more likely to be ignored by the adults around them.

I hope you keep your views to yourself. It can't be much fun for your son knowing you think boys are arseholes.

@PleasantBirthday and girls can also be physically violent too!

Exactly.
Typical of MN sadly.

Well yes, they can. But the same problem arises, we're not looking for it so we don't see it.

People aren't 'assuming'. There is substantial academic research on schools, education systems and methods, and how they impact on the sexes. There is also a wealth of medical and developmental research on childhood development.
Ironically it is your post that is full of stereotypes and anecdotes rather than research.

Until puberty, childhood development is physically pretty much the same for girls and boys. Socialisation is very different though.

@antelopevalley - I think there are sex-linked patterns with learning disability and developmental delay (even pre-puberty), but the patterns are not simple as there are many different conditions (some linked with genetics).

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4549901/

I believe girls and boys may be exposed to different amounts of testosterone in the womb (even if pre puberty their levels may be similar).

At primary age a lot of bad behaviour is swept under the rug by both parents and the school unless is really serious and even then if the child’s close to leaving the school the school seem to keep their fingers crossed they can just get though to July.

by then it’s too late though the child has grown to puberty age getting away with the bad behaviour. The parents end up thinking the secondary is just bullying their poor baby because there was never an issue at primary and of course billy didn’t really mean to hurt Tommy when he punched him in the face it was just boys being boys. When Freddie stabbed Karl with a ruler he snapped he was just playing around and didn’t really mean to hurt Karl. Freddie was a known trouble maker in primary as was billy.

Christ this is terrifying.
When I think about my childhood there was still a small amount If it, the cool girls with the older boyfriends (some much older: shocking now)
Can imagine that yes with socials and nudes and dick pics it's much worse

There are quite a few early years studies that have identified differences between when male and female children develop gross motor skills, fine motor skills, self-help skills (as it was classed in one Norwegian research paper) and movement skills.

I’m with user1477391263
Of course we’ll never be able to tell what is society vs what is biological difference but having B/G twins, it was obvious, even from a young age.
I was a SAHM so it wasn’t nursery’s influence, and although you’ll have to take my word for it, I really really treated them the same.
They both had dolls and both had trains to play with, this type of things. I even remember commenting about a « how to raise girls » book to my DH, saying that it was silly, raising girls is the same as raising boys.
But from 2-3 yo I couldn’t deny it, most boys are into action in a way most girls aren’t. For ex, build a tower with legos, most boys will destroy it very quickly, most girls will try to make it higher (or build a pretend village around it).

I was about to post the same thing!

While I don’t believe in ‘gender identity’ I do believe that biology predispositions the sexes to be more likely to commit certain behaviours.

with men, it’s violence, crime and antisocial behaviour.

Because schools, particularly secondary schools, are fundamentally the wrong environment for many adolescents, and particularly male adolescents. DS1 (15) should not be at school - he is physically and mentally mature enough to work and disposition is FAR better suited to some sort of apprenticeship. This, however, isn't possible because he 'needs' to take GCSEs.

As it happens, DS is academic enough that he should pass his GCSEs (he's capable of good grades but motivated enough to work hard for them tbh), but they will be useless to him in terms of 'using' a qualification. He will end up training into a trade, whereby nobody will care what his grades were.

The system sets children like DS1 up to fail. He has been suspended for the odd day before, but never for violence, despite PP's claiming that's the only reason they do it - sometimes, like DS, it's a response to a build up of many much more minor infractions such as bad attitude, skipping class etc. I'm not excusing those, but they're not violence.

I was a SAHM so it wasn’t nursery’s influence, and although you’ll have to take my word for it, I really really treated them the same.

Lots of people think this. Almost all of them are wrong. From a study about fathers:

In addition, fathers underwent functional MRI brain scans while viewing photos of an unknown adult, an unknown child and their own child with happy, sad or neutral facial expressions. Fathers of daughters had stronger responses to their daughters’ happy expressions in areas of the brain important for processing emotions, reward and value. In contrast, the brains of fathers of sons responded more robustly to their child’s neutral facial expressions.

It's happening on level that is imperceptible to you. It's not all about giving them toys. It's about tiny things like the words we use more regularly, the way we respond to crying or laughing, the way we interest=act with their bodies. Unless you were raised in a cave by gender-neutral wolves, you are subject to it as well.

And even if you treated them the same, the world doesn't. Did every piece of gendered clothing given as a present get tossed? Every GP who called the girl 'pretty' and the boy 'strong' get thrown out, never to darken your door again? Any books you read, did you throw out all the baby books which showed any stereotypes or featured boys more than girls? Watch this in horror

To be honest I think this is the ultimate in society’s excuses for boys.

Schools were made for boys originally: girls were routinely excluded and the inclusion of girls in education had to be fought for. Still does, in many parts of the world.

Nor does lack of education damage boys in the way it does girls. There are loads of behavioural schools full of boys, giving them more and more chances that better behaved children (of either sex) do not get. Are all of those not set up for boys too?

Id be more sympathetic if girls’ superiority in education actually got them anyway, but clearly it does not. Men have more economic success than women, and there are many more options available to less academic girls than boys. Perhaps girls simply have more motivation and incentive in schools, because education and economic lives are not set up for us at all and girls who don’t do well in schools are not valued.

Oops. Not sure what happened there. I meant, there are many more options available to less academic boys than there are to girls.

School is more suited to girls. Boys developmentally a bit behind generally, not ready to go to school.

We have not had this sit down and write culture until the Victorian era (at least for universal education). For millions of years boys were doing things which are more physical - whether trade, farming or survival. Maybe they have adapted less well somehow? Not a blanket statement as obviously girls were also farming and hunter gathering too, for vast proportion of our history/pre-history.

Unidentified or even identified SEN playing out in different (gendered) ways (ADHD)? Needs not met by schools with poor training and no money to provide. Which then leads to unrealistic expectations and 'explosive behaviour' which could/should have been managed before it got to that point. This doesn't fully account for the discrepancy but I would say it features. I see it a lot on SEN FB pages. Girls maybe mask more and explode in the car on way home/at home rather than school.

Agree.

And yes toxic masculinity comes into the mix - which can be fostered by family and/or wider culture.

I don't think that's boy bashing, its the reality of a patriarchal society and does boys real harm.

On the up side a lot of boys seem to do better if they study something they like - and where there aren't thousands packed together like maladapted sardines (not all but quite a few). I work in an FE college and yes there are some exclusions of young men but way less than school.

It's more relaxed, its technical/vocational and aside from a bit of jockying for position in term 1, they mainly seem to crack on and become rather nice lads. I do think both primary and big secondaries do them no favours - just brings out the worst. Especially for the ones who are 'non academic' - reading and writing are often their enemy by secondary, the illiteracy, dyslexia undiagnosed, children leaving school without being able to read and write are shocking. Emotional and social sides of having that from age 4/5 to 16 are huge. No wonder some kick off. I would in their shoes.

Prisons full of men who can't read/write and end up doing crime/time.

Better at college = probably through sheer relief of putting school behind them.

Certainly this, and more boys (diagnosed or undiagnosed) with things like dyspraxia/DCD.

Starting at 6 or 7 years would help. Better focus on physical development for boys and girls would be good right through school.

I do think sit and learn is a poor tactic. We are made to move, biologically. School is inherently biased against this. Some SEN schools are better at incorporating movement breaks, proprioceptive input, and movement skills gross/fine every day. I bet they see a massive difference in children who have had exclusions.

Plus stuff like 'it's nice my work wasn't thrown in the bin by teachers' (actual comment in OFSTED report from a boy who had been in mainstream, dyslexia, now at specialist school and being physically and mentally repaired).

It does go on. Boys punished for things which they can't control always like messy writing or frustration based behaviors because they 'can't do' school - they can't win. Made to stay in at break as not enough writing done. Had the teacher read the OT report about painful hands? Did she bother listening to me when I told her he could barely write 1 sentence? Believe you me I have seen it all.

I think many boys have their self-esteem well and truly eroded.

Happy boys and men with good self esteem might be less inclined towards teenage lashing out and further violence later. One bit of the puzzle anyway.