Why do boys underperform

[sidress]

This is partly in response to a comment on another forum with someone saying that in our lea there is an all girls state school that perform better in league tables than theirs (and disproportionately with levels of deprivation pupils come from) but the girls in the mixed comp outperform the girls in the single sex school.

With two sons and daughters each, I can see the same trend with all except eldest son who doesn't mind revising and less time to go out with friends (though we make sure he has a 'life' out of school as well). Girls have been outperforming boys at all levels of curriculum for about a decade.

Personally I blame it on the teaching styles used that obviously suit girls more than boys. No surprise when 99% of primary teachers are women, at the most formative stage of a child's life, and secondaries seem heading the same way. Also our secondary has much more boys on disciplinary records than girls, so whether they all deserve to be or the school take a heavier handed approach to boys, there is something different about how they are being treated. Or is there another plausible reason boys find it harder so I can prevent mine having a similar fate?

Well, that's the Gareth Malone attitude. But even the very best boys schools under-perform compared to the very best indie girls schools, which suggests to me that something biological is at work, too.
I would go back to fundamentals, I think girls are (as a population) r better at delayed gratification than boys.

'Personally I blame it on the teaching styles used that obviously suit girls more than boys'

Just wondering what are you thinking of specifically sidress?

'I would go back to fundamentals, I think girls are (as a population) r better at delayed gratification than boys'

I agree very much with this but not because it's biological. I work with very young children and their parents and many parents still think that boys naturally struggle more than girls with skills like listening, waiting, taking turns and sharing. The result is that the parents expect much more of the girls, and make allowances for the boys. Expectations of boys and girls in so many areas are very different and are based on perceived (IMO wrongly) innate biological differences.

I agree about the lower expectations for boys, Josie. How often do we hear 'oh, he's just a boy' or 'boys don't like writing', 'oh well, boys aren't as developed as girls - they like playing lego' etc, etc. We never make those kind of excuses for girls.

I said this at a governors' meeting. That went down well. Seems it's not a popular view.

Yes indeed, 'boys need to be active' i.e. tear the house apart! I have often had parents ask me 'why doesn't he listen to me? Is it coz he's a boy?' No, it's coz he's only 2 years old! And maybe also because you don't expect him to listen and so don't praise him for listening. And so it continues!

Well done you for bringing it up at a governors meeting. Lots of people still love their biological determinism and won't be told otherwise! We need to keep challenging it though.

I remember taking DS to a toddler group and a lot of the mothers didn't even attempt to get their DSs to attempt to sit down and join in the song at the end. All the girls would be expected to but "boys will be boys" and so couldn't possibly be expected to actually sit down for 5 minutes.

We seem to have gone full circle with this though because boys certainly did better when I was at school. DH and his brother just did there homework and worked hard for exams without ever being told to. They just expected to do well. DS (year 10) is doing as well as his older sisters but throughout his school life he has been described as "sensible" and "mature" so not a typical boy then

There is an independent school near to where I live which seperates the boys and girls into different schools. Last year the boys outperformed the girls and the boys school made a big deal about it
The point is, it can be done.

So if boys are naturally not as good at things like sitting at desks and listening, turn taking, independant working, creative writing or whatever else, shouldn't we use methods that allow boys to nurture their skills and flourish rather than techniques that let girls thrive and leave boys behind.

I agree about the delayed gratification issue, but again shouldn't we just accept that and adapt learning approaches accordingly instead of putting it down to being of a certain group? I don't want to give too many examples of my own children, but I can see first hand with them and various friends the gulf between the sexes in academic ability and personal skills.

Purely from a parent's perspective I think it's about how we examine at the moment. All the emphasis on course work which I think does allow for an element of style over substance. Boys fared better when you sat and did an exam - once not three times until you get an A grade.

You're right webwiz, it was the other way around when I was at school too. Boys were doing better than girls in every subject. I think in an ideal world of course we would want boys and girls to be achieving equally across the board, but I'm not sure if there was so much hand-wringing back then about whether we were 'failing' girls. I'm sure some people just thought that it was the natural order of things for boys to do better

Besides the point, but a sort of friend of a friend teaches adults on the autistic spectrum who have similar problems josierosie mentioned but for good reasons. They feel totally different about themselves academically and even more in personal belief, because the right methods are used. A distant cry to the humiliation they get at school.

I think it has a lot to do with boys playing far too much computer games. Some teenage boys seem to spend all their free time playing Call of Duty or some such other bollocks.

Also some parents do their boys a huge disservice by parenting to the mantra of "boys will be boys". Most of the time it isn't typical boyish behaviour it is just naughty behaviour.

I understand that in the independent sector boys do not under perform in relation to girls. There's a lesson there!

As a mum - boys don't like school. It is spoilt for them at an early age when they're expected to sit and write too early, ahead of their physical development.

As a teacher - boys don't like school. It is spoilt for them at an early age when they're expected to sit and write too early, ahead of their physical development.

Where did you get your figures from, OP? While the actual figure of 12% of male teachers in primary school is disappointingly low, it is still more than the 1% you quote. Male teachers in secondary school stand at 38%, so, while not equal numbers, is a lot more balanced. Do you think your your secondary is unfair to have more boys on disciplinary records, or do you think more boys have actually done something to deserve to have those records. Just because more boys have disciplinary problems doesn't mean that most boys do, so there is no reason why yours shouldn't be well-behaved.

Lots and lots of research has been done examining ?Gender differences in Education?.
When you have a spare week or so, sit down, Google and read.

As a mother of two girls and two boys, hopefully with an impartial view, I would agree with a lot of the comments on here and say:

• Boys spend an inordinate amount of time on computer games, which stop them from pursuing other enrichment opportunities and developing frankly many skills, including social ones. I have witnessed boys as young as 3 years old being bought a DS and one of my sons in Y1 is the only boy who does not own a DS, a Wii and an IPAD.

• Boys are not encouraged towards cultural activities as a lot of parents tend to steer them towards sports such as football and rugby and away from what are perceived to be more "girly" pursuits or just assume they would not be interested. There was an interesting article on the BBC this week about British children being culturally starved, and although it was not gender specific I do think that it is worse for boys.

• Boys are not disciplined as much as girls and parents tend to have very low expectations of their behaviour AND their academic performance. I hear almost daily at least one mother saying "he's doing ok for a boy"..."boys will be boys" etc...

• Boys do have a tendency to mature later than girls and this can lead to false perception of a boys' academic ability. Also immature behaviour can sometimes be seen as "naughty". Many boys are streamed too early and compare themselves to girls at the beginning of their school career, resulting in low self confidence which is quite difficult to eradicate then.

Socially of course then a lot of high achieving boys become excluded, we've had this issue with my son who is hugely into reading and very clumsy at any sort of sport but who desperately tries to fit in because his interests are seen as uncool. I think this is less of an issues for girls very broadly speaking.

"Well, that's the Gareth Malone attitude. But even the very best boys schools under-perform compared to the very best indie girls schools, which suggests to me that something biological is at work, too."

Ummm - not really. Number one usually is Westminster which is predominantly boys (girls entry at 6th form). Look again at the stats - St. Paul's and the like do NOT under perform.

St Paul's boys came top this year according to the FT league tables with I think an extraordinary 94%+ gettings A's at A level no girls in the 6 th form.

Parents encourage children to behave in a stereotypical way. Some schools reinforce this. Stereotypical boys behaviour is not conducive to contributing in an educational environment, or to contributing to society more widely when they become adults.

DS goes to a school which does not allow gender stereotyping either by staff or pupils. Unsurprisingly, there is no gap between the boys and girls attainment at GCSE.

I went to a talk by the head of the school DD will be going to. She was talking in a very stereotypical way about engaging boys and all the stuff they do especially for boys. Unsurprisingly, there is a massive gap between the girls and boys attainment at GCSE, with the boys doing far worse.

But people seem adamant that boys don't like to read, can't sit at a desk, can't work co-operatively, boys will be boys and so on. So adults encourage boys to not learn and not be responsible. So many of them don't learn and aren't responsible. What will happen when they become adults is worrying.

There were problems with modular GCSEs and so on, but thankfully that has now changed, which will allow both boys and girls to spend more time actually learning.

Does it matter? Men still massively outperform women in the salary and career stakes. So their underperformance in school matters not a jot when they get out of school.

The stats are misleading. There are more boys than girls at both ends of the spectrum i.e. very high performing and very low performing. It's the large number of boys at the bottom (mainly white and working class) that skews the stats but it is not the case that boys, in general, are underperforming.

I would also argue that the same things that lead (middle class) men to succeed in the workplace later on are the things that lead (working class) men to underperform academically namely the way that society encourages conventionally 'masculine' behaviour in boys: competition rather than cooperation, taking risks, (over) confidence, etc, etc.

Girls are likely to underestimate their ability and boys are likely to overestimate it.

It's interesting that the assumption is that teachers and 'teaching and learning styles' are the problem because now that coursework has been largely replaced my guess is that girls will still do better.

Panzee, I think it does matter. Educational attainment is not all about how much money you are going to earn. It is also about what kind of person you are going to be, and we all have to live in a society with people who leave school lacking various basic social, practical and intellectual skills.

A poster mentioned earlier about the reports on children who lack cultural experiences. That has to feed into this. What are these parents doing with their kids? What kind of people are they that they don't have any interest in culture for themselves? It is understandable for some parents who are living in extreme poverty, but that doesn't explain the high number of families who are not participating in the basic culture of this country. That cultural blankness has to have an impact in how they participate at school. It is likely to have more of an impact on boys who spend more time on computer games and competitive sport, and so have less opportunity to make up for that blankness through reading and learning second hand about stuff they have never experienced. I'm not criticising computer games (I can hear DS playing one now) but there has to be some balance in home life and family experiences.

I just wanted to chip in that the trend is much, much older than a decade. I went to a school which changed from single sex (boys) to mixed in the hope that it would improve the overall o and A level results. It did, significantly. And I doubt it was a new idea when I was around, 100s of years ago....

My experience is that boys can perform wonderfully if they are expected to behave in a conducive manner by the school and parents.

And if this is coupled by lots of time outside burning off energy, realtively little time spent in sedentary, solitary screen time and an assumption that boys enjoy literature, culture and art as much as girls, then all will be well.

'The stats are misleading. There are more boys than girls at both ends of the spectrum'

Agree with fivecandles. It is not widely reported that boys outperform girls at the highest levels. The stats are true that on average girls outperform boys, but this is not true at the highest level.

www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=164605&sectioncode=26

On average across all universities, women are now getting more first class honours than men. The article below menbons that this may be due to course work etc. in degrees.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1314715/Women-gain-more-firsts-than-men.html