Alexander

Alexander

Why are boys a problem for the education system today?
Introduction:
Until the middle 1990s boys were not generally seen as aspecific problem in British education. Many researchers in education tendedto focus on the disadvantages facing girls in schools and the way they tendedto be channelled into soft subjects such as cookery and health and socialcare while boys were left to dominate subjects such as the sciences (apartfrom biology), mathematics and wood and metal working.
The increasing penetration offeminist arguments into the debate on education however has increasingly undermined these gender distinctions while the ending of O levels in 1988 andtheir replacement by GCSE led to a more girl-centred examination regime with thefocus on course work.
It has thus become possible tospeak in recent years of boys as a distinct problem for the educationalsystem in Britain. As this essay will seek to point out, though, this is by nomeans to the exclusion of other significant problems such as poor classroomdiscipline, weak teaching in some schools and continuing social and economicdisadvantage for some social groups.
It became evident indeed duringthe 1990s that girls were increasingly out-performing boys across almost allsubjects, especially English, Art, Design and Technology and modern languages.This difference emerges in primary school at Key Stage 1 where a higherproportion of girls than boys achieve a level 2 in reading and writing comparedto boys and continues right through secondary school (ranging from 9.1% in 1998to 7.2% in 2002). The gap between girls and boys in reading and writingcontinues into Key Stage 3 where it widens to up to a 15% difference in 2002.Only in Mathematics do boys outperform girls by a small margin (2.8% in 1998and 0% in 2002) (Ofsted 2003, pp. 38-39). These differences are by no meansunique to Britain since similar differences have been found in otherOrganisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. In all27 OECD...