Poor white boys doing worst in schools

[Hulababy]

Here

So what next? How to address another issue?

Do you think this is new though? I'm pretty ancient and this was definitely the case when I was at school...

Well for a while it was being reported that it was poor black boys IIRR, and there were initiatives to try and get them achieving higher.

Boys have always underperformed girls for as long as I can remember.

And more well off children have outperformed poorer pupils in general I think too.

So, has the initiatives aimed at improving performance of yoing black boys worked - are they now achieving higher, or have the poorer white boy's achievements fallen?

TBH I think it depends on each individual child.

Some poor white boys will be doing really well.

Some rich white boys will be failing.

Same with all sexes/races.

Maybe if they stopped doing their surveys and put more into actual education then on the whole more children would start to do well.

more male teachers are needed. and boys need to be let out to run around alot more than girls

True, on an individual basis there will be cases as you say. But, research from exam results at different stages in education, are showing currently that there are ignificant groups who are doing less well. And that currently the case is that the group of children who do less well are poorer boys.

Personally I think it is good to know this kind of information as it helps to inform schools where they need to focus attentions,

I agree that we need more men in education, especially at primary level.

And boys need a different approach IME. So hopefully schools canact on these findings.

in the past there always seem to be have been a certain "prefix" to the groups that are the latest to be reported to be doing worst, whether it's girls, black boys or boys "Poor".

Perhaps it's not so simple as looking at what goes on in schools, but what goes on outside.............

Just like just about everything else in life you can almost guarantee that there's not a simple black and white answer.

and that wasn't meant to be a bad pun in my last paragraph

This isn't news to me - I used to work in an inner-city comp in London, and white working-class boys was our most underachieving group. There were so many initiatives aimed at other groups (the school was very diverse, ethnically, but was very boy-heavy so the girls doing better thing wasn't so obviously, IYSWIM)that the white boys just got left out. It was really tough as a teacher - obviously you try your best to cater for every individual in your class, but it didn't seem to make as much difference as we wanted it to. Sorry - that was really badly expressed. It really bothered me though. We had plenty of male teachers, and male TAs, but the youth workers and mentors attached to the school were mostly female and/or black - these boys (in this particular school - I am in no way talking generally) didn't have the right sort of role models, or the right sort of "special" treatment - there were focus groups for the girls, for EAL students etc etc but nothing in particular for white working-class boys.

EvilTwins, I think that's brilliantly put. And, without wishing to open a whole other can of worms here, the "neglect" of working class white boys (or perhaps assumption that they're ok and don't need any special initiatives because they're not a minority)leaves the door open for the kind of bigoted "politics" that creates further alienation.