Different exams for boys and girls

[OrigamiYoda]

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jun/18/boys-girls-different-gcse-course

What do you think ?

I think that they have resurrected the old term progressive to fool people. Progressive implies progress and implies that the opposition must be regressive. It is just a BS smokescreen to convince people that their policies are better and more modern. We have seen the dramatic rise in use of this term since they lost the election. It is part of the new spin to make people forget the past mistakes and to concentrate on a bright new progressive future, in the same way that "New Labour" was an attempt to disguise Labour. But all of this is better for a politics thread than this thread.

TFM the conversation moved onto McDonalds running schools and advertising etc., so it moved onto food and is McDonalds really as unhealthy as we are told?

I don't think it has anything to do with McD being unhealthy. It is everything to do with the fact it is a profit-driven business that has no interest in education.

yes you have a point. But if you look at the article that ISNT linked about McDonalds in schools you see that they use the usual arguments about McDonalds causing obesity etc. There is a general view that junk food is unhealthy and they even make documentaries about eating junk food for 30 days and seeing the effect etc.

The article I linked to was to demonstrate the sort of things that happen when big business get a way into schools.

You are on a one-person mission to move this conversation away from the point ie should for-profit companies be allowed into the schools, and onto more of your seemingly endless list of pet topics.

Whether "junk" food is "bad" or not, is another topic again. And unrelated to whetehr we should allow for-profit organisations into our schools.

I don't want to move this away from businesses running schools. I am an advocate of businesses running schools, I think it will be better. Aren't our universities now effectively businesses that run schools?

The only thing I think that is wrong with the universities is that I think the education should be free and our taxes should be used to pay the universities' fees, not the individual students having to load themselves up with debt.

There is a difference between businesses which are set up with the express purpose of running schools (and I'm not sure how I feel about that). And businesses which already exist and have their interests in other areas getting involved in schools. In the latter case, the motivations of the businesses have to be questioned.

I do not think that schools and profit-making go hand in hand. Third sector/not for profit, maybe not so bad. Not sure about that.

So we get in touch with various businesses and say, oi, could you run this school while you're at it?

Mind you, just imagine if Primark ran a school near you. Top marks for enterprise and hand-sewing skills and you'd probably get a few summer t-shirts thrown in. Marvellous. Then you would have kids who worked hard all year long.

My friend sneds her boy to a private school specifically because they "kick him up the arse" regularly.

I think they do it by shaming them by publishing marks every 2 weeks and tut tutting at those who do bugger all. They also have to do extra classes to get them to actually do the work.

My friend freely admits, that if her son had his way he'd do nothing until 2 nights before the exam, revise massively, sit the exam, then forget everything the next day.
This is why his course work is very poorly rated and his exam marks are amazing...his teachers say that on evidence in class they'd rate him under average achiever, but his exam marks show him as very bright...

Businesses do not run universities. Universities run universities.

"My friend sends her boy to a private school specifically because they "kick him up the arse" regularly."

this sounds like something out of Tomkinson's schooldays. Shouldn't the bullying watchdog be called in?

Miggsie, "do nothing until 2 nights before the exam, revise massively, sit the exam, then forget everything the next day."

Isn't that what we all did for O'levels, or was that just me

I can hardly remember anything from those lessons. But my teachers were incredibly boring!

bigTillyMint, I did the same for my degree. Work was never as interesting as the social life.

I found that success in exams was correlated with a) the feasibility of learning the whole syllabus in 2 days, and b) the number of intoxicants and stimulants that you were shoving down your neck at the time.

O levels were therefore the climax of my exam success.

I remember staying up all night on numerous occasions on the eve of exams as I became acquainted with large parts of the syllabus for the first time ever. Glad all those days are over. Don't think I'd have the stamina for it anymore.

Rollmops Sat 19-Jun-10 19:23:45
"But.... boys and girls/men and women are different..... Why is this so hard to accept? The eighties hysteria about 'we are all the same' has finally died down and women can be women and hopefully, one day, men learn to be men again. Or will be allowed to be men again.
If pupils will have a choice which option to take, what's so wrong with it? Girls who excel at exams and boys who enjoy course work can still do what they like and the ones who don't can have an option that suits them."

What about a future employer having the option to say "well, this job requires X style of learning and it is well know that men are better than women at it?

Besides, how will girls know they are not good at exams if they can opt out of them?

Okay, boys and girls are different...I am a BIG supporter of this (see my previous threads in the feminist section)
BUT...
That does NOT mean boys and girls should have a two tier exam system. INtellectually there is NO difference between men and women. Maths is considered to be a feminine subject in Japan, whilst literature is more for men. Most of the differences are cultural constructs.
Study styles may be different, because of behavioural differences ( which again, may be cultural constructs rather than innate) in which case you lay out the same exam for boys and girls but try to encompass the different learning styles. Lots of boys will be more 'feminine' (whatever that is) and lots of girls will be more masculine.

Good post sakura.

I get immensely concerned about "girls are like this and boys are like that" because of the hordes of ones who aren't.

And then if it becomes accepted (as there seems to be a big drive at the moment) that "girls are like this and boys are like that" then don't we end up back we we started ie a situation where a child or adult who wants to do something that "belongs" to the opposite gender gets called a freak and has the piss taken out of them? If people state that "girls are like this" then that surely means that girls who are not like "this" are not normal. It is hard enough to get children to be who they want to be/do what they want to do rather than going with the herd - why make it even harder all over again?

Do we really want to go back to the days when girls did biology and boys physics, girls english and boys maths? It is grossly unfair on the many many children who do not conform to this "average" (and I am still sceptical about the average anyway).

Very dangerous, and everything that the founders of the big womemn's colleges fought against (over 100 years ago).

I am all for a mix of coursework and exams. I was an exam type (much preferred the 3 hour challenge at the end - less work!) but I don't believe that a subject like English Literature can be examined properly from just an exam.

Coursework was brought in during the 1980s to make examination more thorough. And it was hardwork - for those of us who conscienciously ploughed through it. (which all boys could make the choice to do!)

However, it has been blamed for girls overtaking boys at GCSE and - because boys without qualifications cause more trouble than girls - the media is keen that boys should get back in the front.

Great - 2000 years of girls underachieving and then a few years of them doing better than boys and the media/government want to put the clocks back.

As a mother of girls, it makes me cross!

Yes,well put Sakura. This whole discussion makes me twitchy - and I know it's because I am not a typical girl,and I never was.So discussions involving statements on what girls and boys are like can feel quite threatening in a way.

I think if you can show that girls,on average,learn differently from boys,on average, that is fair enough.The problem with all of this is that in the public mind that quickly becomes another statement on what boys are like,and what girls are like - and as you say ISNT,then are the ones who aren't like that not "normal"?.
In education I think you should be ignoring gender,but ensuring that teaching gives equal balance to different learning styles,and balancing assessment to get a fair picture of what all pupils can achieve.
There isn't any need think in terms of gender for that - I think because it is an easy way of dividing people up it can become a lazy way of showing that you are meeting the needs of all individuals - almost saying "Girls need this,boys need this - so we've given them that,everyone is getting what they need - sorted",when it really isn't that simple.

This is absolute bollocks. I totally agree with you ISNT, and Pogle, 50/50 is fine, that way learners have to develop skills in both research and memorising facts, which seems good and useful all round. Agree also that the coursework version will become "second class" and girls will get kicked in the teeth once again by a system that only panics when girls are outdoing boys.

I cannot explain how stupid and irritating this "girls prefer x, boys prefer y" thing is. They always mean "on average more girls prefer x, more boys prefer y", and when it comes down to figures you'll find that something like 56% of girls prefer x, and 52% of boys prefer y. Invariably some idiot then generalises this out to say that, in that case, all girls should do x, all boys should do y. Well what about the nearly half of boys and girls who don't fit in with the "majority" of their gender? If it was 99% correlated with gender it would make sense. This is just crap.

Also, it sounds like they are attempting a double whammy - improving boys' results by not making them do actual pesky work except for the exams, and lessening girls' chances by not having them sit exams. This is wrong, if girls are doing better at the moment the answer is to improve boys' grades somehow, not to put a hobble on the girls who are doing so well with the current methods of examination!

Yes, because remember, when girls were eventually allowed to join in with education alongside boys, nobody decided to alter the entire system in favour of girls. The system was originally designed for boys. They were expected to fit into the boys' system. If girls didn't do well they were told they couldn't hack it. YOu can't change the rules and the goalposts just when it favours boys!

OK, all you do is get the parents of girls to insist on having their girls in the boys class. The girl's course will, naturally, be regarded as inferiour.
Then, when the girls continue to outstrip boys at their own course, hopefully this nonsense will be quietly shelved.
Although I'm sure the girls sitting the boys course won't be treated very well: lots of bias from teachers ( that we have spent years trying to stamp out), lots of brow-beating from the boys too