School Instagram post - boys doing better than girls

[Sallycinnamon1974]

My twins are in year 11 at a local secondary school. The school has an Instagram page where a teacher posts motivational quotes and reminders every so often, usually fairly harmless stuff.

However today’s post says “so guess what - boys have done better than girls in their mocks”.

I feel really uneasy with this as I think young people have enough insecurities and confidence issues without the girls potentially taking a knock due to this post. It just feels a bit sexist and wrong. I’m not sure what to think really, but can any of you kind people give me a steer from a feminist perspective please? Thank you.

I'd find it an odd thing to say. I posted a thread a few months ago about the reporting of GCSE results.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3344376-Boys-and-GCSEs

There seems to be a need to re-balance things, a feeling that it's unfair if girls do better than boys. So, if boys have done better than girls in the mocks, that's to be celebrated. If girls do better than boys, the reasons why need to be teased out and understood.

Maybe I'm just a bitchy bitch, but it annoys me.

I get that educators need to know these things to assess teaching and examination strategies etc, but that just seems like an unhealthy way of pitting girls and boys AGAINST each other - don't we have to much of that shit in society already?

I thought I posted something but it's disappeared!

Firstly it doesn't say anything about individual boys and girls - a boy could crow over a girl that boys' results were better than girls whilst his results were worse than that girl. It reinforces divisions between boys and girls. And it could demotivate both groups in different ways.

A lot of the reporting of boys do better than girls across all subjects is a function of boys taking more subjects in which a higher proportion of students get higher grades.

Everard - you did post, for some reason the OP posted the thread twice.

My WiFi is a bit dodgy sometimes, I assumed it was me!

Have they ever posted anything along the lines of 'guess what - girls have done better than boys in their mocks'?

If they haven't then I would definitely raise an issue - both on the instagram post along the lines of 'how incredibly sexist and unprofessional to congratulate the boys when they do well but ignore the girls when they do well as you have done previously' (would you know if they don't tell you or do the stats come out in the wash elsewhere at all?) but also complain about it to the head teacher.

Hi rosablue, they haven’t posted anything of this nature before. Until now it’s been motivational quotes or reminders to bring a calculator and such like. I think the post will just be misguided rather than malice, the teacher probable hasn’t thought it through.

I hope the instagram poster isn't an English teacher

The boys could well be doing "better than the girls" because the girls are now failing.