Do teachers mark girls' and boys' work differently?

[BitOfFun]

I have a dd in year 8, and a dss in year 9, and while helping him with a project for his homework and obviously seeing what he was handing in (two sheets of A4, covering the topics to the bare minimum ), I noticed that my daughter will spend a few weeks if she is given enough notice on something, hours on the net etc etc, and yet come out with a similar mark. She will even find the criteria for marking online and try to make sure she is producing the quality and quantity they seem to expect for her to reach her "target" . Obviously, she will hand in a much longer and more detailed piece as a result. Both of them are bright, and it's not like either of them are geniuses (sp?), but dss does seem to have more of a "that'll do" approach...so why are the teachers giving them pretty much equal marks?

I'm not one to go steaming into school over it, or comment in front of the kids, but I would like to know if anyone can explain why this might be?

Note: I haven't put this in AIBU, so tell me what you think, but don't go jumping on my head if you think I'm being a bit precious or something!

Are they at the same school & having the same teachers? If not different mark schemes may apply.

Are they both getting full or near full marks? If so, your dss is approaching the ceiling and all the extra work your dd does is overkill.

Otherwise, then maybe.

Another possibility is that teachers are marking against your dcs usual level of work rather than against an absolute scale.

My dd found quite early on that if she dashed off a couple of pieces of work & then made a big effort for the next one she received much higher marks & accolades than her friends who handed in consistently good quality work .

They are at the same school, yes. Probably different teachers mostly though.

I wonder about "overkill" too , but beyond seeing if she could be more concise, it does seem like she is doing what the stuff on the BBC website says she should be doing. I'm not sure that I want her to do less than her best, but I also don't want her to become uptight and anxious about all these targets and being a perfectionist.

In general I try to encourage her to do her work but not get too stressed, and with dss I am more along the lines of "Come on, can you put some more evidence in there, or illustrate what you mean?", but he just whacks it out as quickly as possible before going out to play football!

They could both do with a pinch of the other's attitude really, but why it seems to make no difference to their marks I don't know?

X-posts there- yep, it does seem like that, but it shouldn't be really, surely? I am definitely a bit about it too!

It's a very interesting question, and I don't know what the answer is. I only have boys, and I often worry that their lack of desire to hand in meticulous, prettily presented pieces of teacher-pleasing work might make their marks a bit lower.

So I wonder whether the teacher is making a conscious effort to reward only those portions of your dd's work that address the question exactly and non-superfluously. Otherwise boys might be penalised for characteristics that aren't essential to the business of learning the subject iyswim.

That would be a good policy, because so much of schooinf these days is a bit too 'girl-friendly' at a cost to boys.

I know that one of my older son's (13) teachers has commented that he enjoys the lack of superfluity in his essays -- he explicitly said that other pupils were doing more, but that it was tedious to read because not concise and well-tailored to the question in hand.

I suppose all you can do is ask at parents evening & see what they say. I've never heard of marking boys work differently but it's an interesting idea. I just feel it's more likely they feel your dss might not be capable of much better work (which from the sound of it he is) & don't want to demoralise him.

Martianbishop, a science teacher who used to post here, used to say that the latest research showed that childrens work improved most if work wasn't graded, as if it was, the kids just looked at the mark & ignored the comments (& got demoralised & switched off if the grade wasn't high). The ideal was to just give a comment telling them exactly what needed to be done to improve their work.

the ability to say something clearly without waffle is a good thing and may be all that is required in an essay at exam level

i guess in an exam environment there isnt time and space to produce reams of material, so perhaps it isnt required also in school?

I wondered if it was an effort to be "boy-friendly" too...and I very much like the idea of comments rather than marks, wouldn't that be great?

I do take the point about waffle, but at the same time, if these marking schemes are saying "must show x, y and z", you can't usually do that in just a sentence, can you?

Dd does waffle sometimes, but she covers the points, and I'm not convinced that dss is actually doing that. Ho-hum, I suppose I'll have to ask at parents night, and risk sounding like a moaning minnie...thanks for your thoughts; I'd still be interested to hear if anyone else has come across the same thing though?

Yes, def ask. And it would be great to let us know what the teacher says. Is interesting.

When I was still teaching I would always mark all work against the same criteria for any child in my class regardless of gender. For some pieces of work we also gave an effort grade too.

I also made comments at the end of each piece of work about the work done, along with a hint or target of what they could do next time in order tof urther improve their work.

I seriously doubt it. What would be the point? How old is yr8/9? I am not au fait with the English school system but it may be that they are in set clases working towards a particular level. In this case, whilst the project could be similar, the teacher will be marking against the outcomes expected for a pupil of that level. Although your dss is older he may not yet be at the level your dd is. Both marks could be out of 20, for example but your dd may be getting 20/20 at a higher level.

Alternatively, your dss may have a more lenient (perhaps newer) teacher than your dd.

There should be a department and school marking policy, and teachers should mark according to this. I would be shocked if there were different policies for boys and girls.

I don't teach boys, but I will mark work according to the needs of the individual child, within the marking policy. A very able child will probably be given more stretching targets than one who is weaker. I may correct lots of spellings on most pupils' work, but a dyslexic with low self-esteem may only have 2 or 3 words to practice.

Some pupils do go above and beyond what is asked for, but there won't be extra marks available. If a pupil does everything asked and there are generally no important improvments, they should get the top mark available. If a child does more than this, they can still only get the top mark. The recognition for the extra effort would be shown by the award of house points, or whatever merit system the school has.

I don't generally encourage students to do more than required. They need to learn to follow the instructions given, rather than decide to do what they want. This is a very useful examination skill, as the majority of silly marks are lost for not reading the question properly. They might as well learn this harsh lesson early on.

I teach English and work is only given levels 3 times a term; the rest of the time we give an effort grade.

And thinking about it, I might well give different effort marks for different pupils - determined by individuals rather than gender. But the levels are marked against the NC and so are standardised. It's quite possible that your ds will have hit the criteria and so deserves the level and your dd does too, but as her work looks so much nicer it miught be tempting to award a better mark. But the difference should be in the effort grade, not the NC level, iyswim.

I have never heard of different mark schemes for boys and girls. However, one explanation could be that a danger I have sometimes found in longer pieces of work, is that length does not necessarily make the work better. For example, some students will cut and paste large amounts of text from the internet - but what marks can you really give for that? They need to show that they understand what the text is about, that they understand it... so often this gets forgotten about and it just gets stuck in with no evidence at all that the child has even read the thing they have been researching. Hence all this extra material can be credited with very little marks.

I am a history teacher and have never marked boys' and girls' work differently. It would be illegal to do so.
I have, however, had to explain that the gorgeously presented, fabulously researched work on a topic has not reached the anticipated level because it hasn't addressed the specific question. For example, "why did so many people die when the Titanic hit an iceburg" can generate a fifteen page decsription of the Titanic and life upon it but not actually explain about the different causes of the loss of life. Someone else could write one paragraph which gives basic detail on a range of causes and they would get a higher level.
A good teacher should explain to their students how to achieve the levels in advance of them doing the work.

Thanks for all your thoughts here...I am still a bit mystified though, as I really don't think dd is too bad a waffler, and it seems funny to me that dss is coming across as the soul of brevity who can cut to the chase in a magical masculine fashion, when he isn't, he 's just a naughty little boy [Life Of Brian emoticon], lol!

it reminds me when i saw my dh uni work once - (pre pcs by the way) his essays were short, terrible writing etc mine were more polished, longer - we got the same grades

In my further maths A-Level there was a bloke who was renowned for being v brainy but had god-awful handwriting - really illegible.

I had a theory that he always got top marks as the teacher assumed he knew what he was doing.

One time I copied his work - with him translating for me on the (many) bits I couldn't read.

He got an A- and I got a C+ or something (can't remember exactly but quite a bit lower.

Very interesting...

For the OP though, it's different teachers, so if DD and DS were twins and handing into the same teacher maybe DD would get much higher.

NO

Tumtumtetum, there was some interesting research done that showed that one of the most important factors in how well a student did was the teacher impression of that student. In the research, they told a load of teachers that some children were brighter than they actually were, and the students showed a remarkable improvement in their performance. Seems that teacher impressions is actually quite important in student success.

I teach English at a secondary school. I don't mark girls or boys work differently, I mark according to the criteria. I usually give a separate mark for effort, and one for attainment. To be honest, when you've got a pile of 30 GSCE coursework essays to mark and you're tired, I often don't register who wrote the essay and just get down to marking what's there. I think it's because I'm also a GCSE examiner and when you have 500 papers to mark in three weeks - gender rarely comes into it.

It's hard when you see that a child, boy or girl, has put so much effort in, and you still have to mark it with the same criteria. It doesn't seem fair. I also make sure I send postcards home to parents, give house-points and make a point of really praising the pupil for effort.

Teachers need to also give constructive advice on how to improve the work - along with the 'target' so that your DD knows how to improve her work.

The thing is, that often a brief and concise essay can be awarded as highly as a 12 page essay as the mark scheme does not award effort, but the quality of the writing and the points made.

P.S. I don't think you're being precious, at all, you sound like you really care passionately about your kids' education - which is fab!

At around the age of 9 I twigged that the two 'clever' boys in the class were no cleverer than I was; they were just praised and applauded more. We had the same teacher for the final two years of junior school and although she was a very good and experienced teacher she obviously had some subconscious desire to encourage the boys more. I was enraged by the unfairness and determined to beat those boys in everything - sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't, but they continued to receive fulsome praise and I got a curt 'well done'. There were a few teachers at secondary school who behaved the same way. It made me thoroughly but at the same time was pretty useful because it made me try harder. So I don't think every teacher does it, but I bet a few do. As long as your DD is receiving praise for good work there's prob not much you can do about it though.

Just re-read my post and realised there are two apostrophes missing..... no excuse but I am pregnant, tired, hormonal and have a toddler running around.....