Research School Network: Why are boys falling behind at school?

by Karen Roskilly, Research School Lead

This half term, the Sandringham Education Reading Group focused on gender differences in education using the Financial Times article ​‘Why are boys falling behind at school?’

Some of the key themes that emerged from our discussion were:

The importance of literacy

There is significant evidence to highlight the importance of literacy skills in supporting educational success. This was a theme that was addressed by Alex Quigley in a twilight session on secondary literacy at Sandringham Research School last week (the blog with more details about this session can be found here.) and was echoed by the teachers in the group. They identified reading as a key area of concern and spoke about the visible differences they had seen between girls and boy in this area, with one teacher speaking about the need to make reading more appealing to boys.

The article refers to an initiative at Huntington School to increase children’s vocabulary, with Matt Smith, acting Headteacher explaining the rationale behind this approach: ​“When you hit an important word in a story that you don’t understand, boys sometimes feel ​‘I’m wasting my time here’. If the behaviour of kids is not acceptable, it’s generally in subjects where they struggle. What are those subjects? Generally those with a large vocabulary.”

The ABC of Gender Equality in Education: Aptitude, Behaviour and Confidencepublished by the OECD states that boys may need more encouragement to read than girls and suggests that we should encourage boys to read what they want as reading anything encourages the habit of reading.

Motivation and aspiration

The importance of aspiration runs strongly through the article, with it stated that ​‘glimpsing different careers can be transformative, especially for white working class boys with no first-hand experience of jobs in the modern economy.’ The group agreed that careers advice to support social mobility is essential, but did question how successful schools are in promoting and supporting students who want to follow non-academic pathways.

Gender differences in the classroom

The article did lead us to consider our unconscious biases, how this might manifest itself in our classrooms and the impact this may have on students. Do we have different expectations of boys and girls? There was certainly an acknowledgement that this is possible, particularly as there was some consensus that boys tend to dominate classrooms, compared to girls. This was also linked to the impact of gendered socialisation from a young age and how this shapes our behaviour and expectations.

Mixed ability classes

As a sociologist, it was fascinating to hear the discussion around mixed ability classes versus set classes and how students in lower attaining sets, often boys, can become negatively labelled and that this can have an impact on their self-esteem and motivation.

Support for mixed ability classes comes from the EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit, which states:

​‘Setting or streaming may also have an impact on wider outcomes such as confidence. Some studies from the broader evidence base conclude that grouping pupils on the basis of attainment may have longer term negative effects on the attitudes and engagement of low attaining pupils, for example, by discouraging the belief that their attainment can be improved through effort.’

There was an interesting mix of opinion on mixed ability versus setting which resulted in a thought-provoking discussion.

​‘Best Practice in Grouping Students’, a research project funded by the Education Endowment Foundation and conducted by researchers at UCL and Queen’s University Belfast, has just published a list of ​‘dos and don’ts’ of attainment and mixed ability grouping. Click here to read more.