What can be done to close the gap in gender performance?

[Marcelinewhyareyousomean]

School released details about how Year 2 cohort performed against each other, in comparison with national targets and over the past three years. Ds's school shows a worrying trend in that boys do not perform as well as girls and that the % rates are falling year on year.

Will the new 2014 curriculum support equally high gender achievement?

Can/ should I be supporting my y3 ds at home. I'm not normally a fan of homework.

There always tends to be a gender gap, girls always perform better in the tests that the boys.
A lot more worrying would be the % rates falling year by year because that says the school is not making good progress with its pupils.

I'm old . When I was at school boys outperformed girls. I don't understand why there needs to be a gender gap. Are boys and girls really better at different subjects? If so why aren't they tested accordingly. If not, why don't boys test well?

The falling trend in school is very worrying.

Research has shown that in general girls and boys learn differently. In the 1960s and 70s there was a big boy bias and then there was a shift to girl type learning.
But it's not that simple. Schools that really consider this don't group by ability, but by learning style.

His school must be old fashioned; they group by ability from the first week in reception.

Why does a different learning style impact on testing? I can't believe one gender is better than another. I'm a fraternal twin and my dbro was considered better than me at traditionally male subjects when we were younger (80/90s). Utter tosh by proper 16+ exam time; maybe I simply tested better?

I have twins and in the first year at school my daughter was miles a head of my son, in every aspect. By the end of P3 my son had really matured and in maths was ahead of my daughter. They both have there strengths and weaknesses, but my son had definitely caught up academically.

My concern is that he has gone from "outstanding/ahead of his peers" to "a good average" in 18 months. This may be do to him settling in better than his peers and them catching up. Expectations seem low. He has started to say things about girls being better than boys at literacy and writing. There is no 'boys are better at xyz' to counter this. ( I'm not sure there should be).

I would be questioning the teaching. IMO a good teacher never compares boys to girls!

It will be a new/ year teacher and I'm hoping that stops. The published results of Y2 sats do bolster the same attitude.

fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/oxed/primary/literacy/projectx/PX_garytips.pdf?region=uk

Great ideas there mrz. [ thanks.

He has said that girls are cleverer and that the teachers prefer them. I can adopt these at home.

He did the reading challenge over the holidays and read lots. This is because it was all of his choice, if schools had minecraft instruction books there would be a lot more reading. He isn't keen on fiction but has read a lot about apes, monkeys and space travel. School reading books just can't compare.

His school has a very clear focus towards literacy and numeracy seems a bit of a poor cousin.

If you Google Gary Wilson raising boys achievement you should find more info

We have found in our school that the boys are starting to really thrive in the learning through play environment. Because we are in Wales that continues right through to the end of year 2. The learning can be very physical e.g. if learning clocks they can go outside and make a massive clock out of drain pipes and rocks and it really suits the boys who didn't want to sit at a desk and learn.
There is still a gender difference in the sit down tests we have every year from yr 2 upwards, where in general the girls are slightly outperforming boys. However because our pupil numbers are very small these figures can be very skewed e.g. in DS1s year there was only 4 boys whilst there were 12 girls so not really comparable

Thanks Mrs.

The numbers aren't slightly different, which is a worry.

I've had a look at the blink and recall that ds used to get Project x books which he liked way more than Biff and Chip.