Inequalities in our schools - do they exist and if so does it worry you and what best to do?

[JustineMumsnet]

I'm posting this on behalf of the Observer. Think it's quite an interesting discussion

Hi there,

The Observer is carrying a news feature this Sunday looking at inequalities in Britain's schools and I'm keen to generate a discussion among mothers about some of the issues.

In particular, I'm interested in how people feel about the growing gender gap between girls and boys? Do mothers worry about their sons underperforming in school or behaving badly? Why do you think there is a gender gap? The story will also look at special needs and concerns about bullying. Do parents of children with SEN worry about this? What about parents who find out their children have bullied others - how do you tackle that? And what do you think teachers can do to help improve the performance of children from the poorest families? Please do call me if you'd like to speak about this issue or just post your thoughts here.

All the best,

Anushka

Policy editor
The Observer
07786702523

onceamai Fri 08-Oct-10 05:04:52
"In my opinion a great deal of the problem relates to the fact that boys like competition and because this has been so diluted in state schools there is nothing for them to aspire to."

Not sure about this. Plenty of opportunity for competitition in every school I have seen, with the system of ability tables, and Reading Trees and SATS and marks for this, that and the other. Not to mention getting picked for the school team and representing the school at sports and music events and getting lead roles in drama. If it was as simple as competition, then all the boys would be fighting to get into top set.

In fact, this is why my ds has totally lost faith in himself, because he is always on the lower tables, never does well in tests and is never picked for anything. Ime the only boys who thrive on competition are the ones who do reasonably well in competition.

I'd say dd thrives on competition. But then she is getting top marks and the lead role in the school play and gets picked for special outings to represent the school in literacy. What's not to like about competition if you're her.

My concerns are:

Class

Parents - by following league table and wanting to hang around with people like themselves - have created a network of schools that are either very middle class or the opposite. In towns, schools are less mixed than they used to be.

I don't want my children to mix with only families like themselves and I'm not sure it's good for society as a whole. (And it's puzzling because schools are more similar than ever before!)

Gender

We are obsessed with boys underachievement, even though it's only recently that girls caught up. (and at Oxbridge, they still haven't.) I was very unhappy when I discovered that one exam board was going to set 'girl' exams and 'boy' exams. Why should girls have to do lots more coursework, just because boys don't like it!

Michael Gove

He believes that parents all want their children to sit in rows and learn facts. I do not want that at all and - despite having well behaved children who would probably sit quietly - really do not want their time wasted this way. It will also put the majority of children off learning.

Obsession with A-level results

I can't stand the papers in late August as they discuss A-level results and whether they are easier or not. Since they are just a comparator, I can't see that it really matters - this years A-level students aren't competing for the same jobs as me. However, the discussion blindly assumes that everyone takes A-levels. They don't. It seems that our education system and all the discussion about it is based entirely around the few who do A-levels and ignore the majority of children.

Other than the above, I think primary schools are great now, and I'm amazed by how quickly my children have progressed. We did so much less when we were at school.

I often wonder how much teachers expect children from perceived deprived backgrounds to achieve.

My children go to our local school which is not in the best part of town, but having moved here from London, I know it is far from rough. As a governor I'm constantly having to challenge comments like 'that's ok for 'posh, popular school' in marginally better part of town, but our children won't be able to do that/go there/join in etc.'. Ok, these comments tend to come from the more old school teachers and older generation governors, but still irritate.

Successfull schools in London are invariably successful because they don't allow class and living standards to be used as an excuse - they expect children to achieve. If we believe in children they are more likely to be successful, irrespective of their background.

I think we need to pay a little less attention to drawing class lines and more to ensuring that standards are maintained in all schools.

As the mother of a particularly bright boy, who is consistently achieving ahead of his peers in a very average state primary school, I don't experience the gender divide. I do see a difference in the behaviour and motivation of a lot of the boys and I think it often comes down to lack of male role models (we need more male teachers in the primary sector) and watching too much of the absolute rubbish allowed onto the many childrens channels available on TV these days - my son nicknames them 'Powerranger boys'. My son is popular with his peers, male and female inspite of his particular academic ability, as he also has emotional intellegence, which has been helped by limited TV watching and plenty of intellegent input from family - very little of this cost actual money, just time and effort.

Good points, decision. Have been viewing secondaries in the last few weeks and was a little taken aback to see the difference in expectations. The last one we saw was one in a deprived(-ish) area, with poor results and not a brilliant Ofsted. And we were very struck by the complete absence of expectations in any teachers we spoke to. It was all about vocational and not pushing them into over-academic choices. I felt like asking what they would do for a child who wanted to go on to Oxbridge. But knew ds would never forgive me.

I'm also a school governor and agree with Decisions about high expectations and not using underprivilege as an excuse. Good schools also do many discreet things to get deprived children to attend extracurricular activities which left to their own devices, tend to be dominated by better off, motivated families. Poorer families can be put off by cost, kit etc and also practicalities like collecting children at different times, all of which can be overcome with a little creativity by the school's management.

My eldest boy is now at secondary school and I've been shocked by the assumption that there is a computer and printer at home, with endless colour cartridges - my son got detention once because our colour cartridge ran out and he could only print his homework in B&W. Oh yes they also assume you have the full microsoft office suite, homework can often be to do something on an excel spreadsheet etc. In theory there is provision at school for children without these facilities, but it's not hard to see how middle-class children with educated and motivated parents will do better is it?

I agree with what Alicatte says. I am about to generalise a lot, but in my experience both as a governor at various schools, and as a mother of 2 boys, the gender gap is a lot to do with the 'feminisation' of education, particularly at primary level, because the characteristics of 'good' behaviour that is expected at school clearly does not come easily to boisterous boys. There are too many female teachers and headteachers who demonise boys and I know of numerous boys who have become bored and frustrated and start to underachieve because they are always in petty trouble, for really just being boys - being noisy, climbing trees. On the other hand I have seen the amazing impact that male teachers can have on boys. I think there should be more experimentation with single sex teaching.

hell yes, I worry myself sick about all these things

I worry about the gender gap being used as an excuse to force girls and boys back into neat little gendered boxes based on spurious research about girls and boys having different brains (and yes much of it is pretty spurious - see this book.

I worry about the class gap; I am gradually watching as my dd's friends leave our not-doing-terribly-well primary in favour of the local private primary and I just see the gap widening every day.

I worry about the fact that many state schools, even supposedly outstanding ones, do not provide well for bright kids; eg I face sending my dd (who loves languages) to a secondary school that only teaches one foreign language, unless we move house. I do think good, challenging, stimulating teaching for academic children is pretty hard to come by in the state system; it is there in grammar schools and some outstanding comprehensives, but it is not by any means available to every child who would benefit from it.

I worry a lot about gender-related and sexual bullying in schools; I get the impression it is tolerated in a way that racial bullying would never be these days. Would love to be able to buy my way out of that situation by sending dd to a girls' school if it proves to be an issue, but the choice of single sex is generally only there if you can afford it.

the gender and class things seem to be rather intertwined....

I'm not too sure about single sex teaching in co-ed schools. I think it risks using the 'gender' label in the same way as the 'class' label - as an excuse for under achievement. Yes, certain teaching methods work better for some children (irrespective of gender) and we need to be more focussed on individual children and their learning needs rather than gender stereotyping.

I agree with seth, in that I think one of the greatest inequalities in education today is the lack of provision for bright children - this tends to be coupled with the lack of expectation in schools, encouraging the lack of aspiration in the children.

I worry less about the gender gap than I do about some assumptions here - that boys have a tendency to behave badly, that they need tough competetive environment etc. Not all boys are like that. Some girls are like that.

What DOES worry me is that we are heading towards a 2 or 3 tier education system - private, good state with high expectations, and mediocre state with low expectations.

ManicMother, I disagree. I think that a lot of people box boys off as "boisterous". I think that modern teaching methods do favour well behaved quiet children, and I think that a lot of people are pushing boys into this "boisterous" box and so the cycle continues.

So, so often I hear from mothers of boys when they are behaving badly - "what can you do? They're boys"...as if, "we expect nothing, they are only boys" or "get used to bad behaviour, they are boys".

I think that boys these days are expected by their parents to behave badly simply because they are boys and by the time they get to school they can't sit still or behave. But that is not because of their gender, but how they have been treated and raised.

The biggest inequality is still relative wealth, not gender.

I worry both about the gender gap and the class gap.

Gender gap: at my children's school, boys lag behind girls by a long way. Teachers seem to leave boys to play on the trikes and sand outside for most of Reception and Y1, then realise at Y2 that they are way behind and catching up is a massive task. I have an academic boy, but he's never being encouraged and he feels under pressure to join the boys outside rather than the girls colouring in or writing.

The class issue is huge. My children's school is truly mixed and yet you can already see that:

• the parents that spend the most time reading at home with their kids, doing writing practice, maths practice on top of their homework put the kids at a massive advantage; the other kids are invariably left behind.

• Middle class kids go to ballet, tap, play cricket, play a musical instrument, go swimming; but they do all this at the parents' expense out of school;

• at Y2/Y3 we go from classes of 30 to classes of 15 as the better off parents all move the kids to private; that's because the local secondary is massively underachieving.

So the class gap is even wider after that;

It's so black and white, it's hard not to see it....

class inequality is wihtout doubt alive and thriving.

The school where I volunteer is in a deprived area and the expectations/aspirations are very low, both from the school, the pupils, and particulary the parents.
Also low, are the raw basics of literacy, understanding of the world around them etc.
Unuprisingly, results are poor.

Yet these children can't be any less intelligent than average can they?

zapostrophe:
I worry that our catchment secondary doesn't offer three separate sciences, just "double science". I worry that history and geography are taught by the same teacher. I worry that I'll have to send our children to a specialist sports college when they're not in the least bit sporty. I'd like them to be given the option to have academic aspirations, and not have to waste a couple of GCSE choices on subjects that will give them no credit if they want to apply to an academic university.

I worry about those things too, but the 11-plus is not an option where we live as there are no grammar schools. In fact, our entire secondary system is being 'reorganised' at present, every school will be changed in some way making it incredibly hard to plan for the future. There are currently no outstanding non-faith schools near to us, and we are facing an overall place shortage due to the reorganisation.

The city has a woeful educational record as it is, but in one respect it is fair - it fails everyone, not just poor families.

I worry about the girls more than the boys. They are pushed into gender roles (and assumed gender beliefs) from a very early age. Look at all the pink toys that have appeared over the past decade! They are 'expected' to acquiesce and to follow rules. In school, it is more difficult to get a girl to think creatively and to use her imagination, although they love it!

We had an interesting chat in my Y2 class recently about the 'perfect' bedroom in their collages. One of the boys said that his boy's bedroom would have Star Wars posters. I asked why he specified 'boy's'. He nearly fell on the floor laughing and told me that girls couldn't possibly like star Wars as it had fighting in it. So I asked the girls who liked Star Wars (all of them), and one girl said she played with her brother's Star Wars toys.

I believe the toy manufacturers, clothing manufacturers and therefore, parents, are creating a massive gender gap before children arrive at school.

I trained at a school where they closed the gender divide between boys and girls in English through single sex teaching in KS4. V Interesting.

maria they do that at my school, think it's just in yr 11, boys' class and girls' class.

I have to say (I am a cover supervisor not a teacher!) that it's a bit of a mare to cover - the boys behave really badly and the girls chat and chat and piffle.

Of course their behaviour is better for their regular teacher (I hope!) but I can't help thinking, as I stand there, I could do with some boys/girls to lighten the mix (one way or the other) - which would probably improve their learning experience overall? Maybe not tho.

I don't know (not been there long enough) whether it is an early experiment in improving grades ora long-term thing that has worked for years. I must ask.

It worries me that our in local comp girls do much better than boys in every subject. Our DS1 is doing very well at school and has always been in top sets etc. - same as a lot of other boys at his school, which is the feeder school for the comp. Looking at their statistics not many boys achieve A or A* GCSE compared to the girls.

My understanding of the English school system is somewhat limited as am from another (European) country but from friends I know that children who were not exceptional at GCSE do not very well at studying A-level. I know it's not the be all and end all but why would a large comp only have so few boys doing very well? I suppose the kicking in of hormones makes a difference but it should also for the girls?

I went to a Sue Palmer talk on the education of boys a couple of years ago. She had done a lot of research and reported some studies that said that boys' CNS were actually speeded up by playing the 'quick response' style of computer game (fighting, driving games etc.)

This tied in with some other studies which indicated that this would make it difficult for boys who used a lot of video games to put down memory traces and consequently made it difficult for them to learn. Certainly I had noticed that the computer game addicts did find it difficult to remember things - before I knew any of the research.

I have some vague memory that Kumon have also published some research suggesting something similar, which interestingly they claimed had been originally commissioned by Nintendo or Sony - the researchers had hoped to find exactly the opposite result. I know it was Kumon and I was suspicious too at the time - but now I wonder if it is possible to find it again.

Has sue Palmer done a lot of research or has she just gathered research in favour of the view that boys learn differently? I read her book (21st century...) and found the latter. Some of the research she quotes has been strongly disputed.

I think - inevitably you are always looking for something. In her case, from what she said, she was looking for some explanation or perhaps even an answer to a statistical observation.

I have noticed that, statistically, boys do overall achieve lower results than girls - from KS2 upwards. I think we can all accept that that shouldn't be the case.

As I said earlier I am, on balance, not of the opinion that effective learning styles can differ substantially. I think there is a whole new tranche of research suggesting that learning styles are really retrieval styles (i.e. they are a way to remember and not to learn).

BUT I do think that boys (again not all boys) take longer to mature and Sue Palmer does seem to have something interesting to say - well to my mind anyway.

Learning styles = general bollocks.

That ain't research.

And I just don't think it's useful to generalise what boys are like and what girls are like.

Oh sorry pointydog - I realise what you mean now. I was using the term research in the sense of 'review research' - researching all the currently available replicated studies as an overview.

I take what you say - that there may be other conclusions. I just found it interesting.

oh that's ok. Don;t mean to be too bolshy.

Her book just irritated me after a while.

I don't mean to overgeneralize - I am a teacher of KS2/3 - its just my idle opinion but I can't help but notice patterns with successive groups of boys over the years. It is all anecdotal.