Differentiation has become common place in our classrooms, so much so that it is hardly ever raised these days at job interviews and is taken as a non negotiable. However, I would like to raise the question through this week's Food for Thought in a different context, that of gender performance. There can be no argument that there is an increasing disparity between boys and girls performance at school, that this is impacting the work place and society in general. We come face to face with it every time we hold academic award ceremonies, as the clear majority of students winning awards for both achievement and engagement are girls. But what are we doing to address this increasingly important issue? Through this provocation my intent is not to initiate a gender war but rather to encourage us to think of strategies that will encourage all our students to be energized, engaged and empowered by their school experience.
Apart from our recent secondary awards ceremony which made the disparity very obvious, this topic was further ignited in my consciousness when I read this recent NY Times article which partially aligns the political support that Donald Trump received as a consequence of boys failing in education. As the article acknowledges, despite all the data about females increased position and power in the workforce there is still a disparity at the very top of the wealth and CEO charts in favour of males. Hopefully this will be addressed over time. However, it is what is taking place at lower levels in society that make this topic important for us in education as we prepare our students for their futures.
Across the Atlantic in this article from the Guardian newspaper in the UK, 'Our schools are failing boys, which is bad news for Britain,' Lincoln's MP Karl McCartney identifies the same trends and raises the question about why aren't schools doing more to address this issue.
"But there is hardly anything being done to tackle it. It was almost as though the problem had not permeated the Westminster or Whitehall “bubble”, even though it is clearly an equalities and fairness issue. Why has there been such little action on the issue? If the genders were reversed, I am almost certain this would not be the case. Indeed for well over 25 years, taxpayers’ money has welcomely and successfully been spent on encouraging female applications for science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses in higher education. Yet, there is no or little reciprocal focus on men becoming doctors (two in every three new GPs are female) or lawyers (over three in five trainees are female).
It is due to the lack of focus on this issue from successive governments of all colours, from policymakers and from the education sector, that I am leading a parliamentary debate today on the educational underperformance of boys and the gender education gap.
This gap in attainment is stark, starts young and is not new. At Key Stage 2 (in old money, 11 years old) the gap is six percentage points. For GCSEs, the gap for five A*-C grades, including English and Maths, is nine percentage points in England and more than seven in the other three home nations. Its impact is also stark. Annually 30,000 fewer boys than girls are becoming apprentices, 60,000 fewer go to university every year (460,000 fewer over the past decade) and more young men are not in education employment or training (NEETs). Fewer men are entering nearly all of the professions and between the ages of 22 and 29, young men earn less per hour on average than women, in both full-time and part-time roles."Many years ago when I was preparing to give a workshop on gender differences in education I discovered Philip Zimbardo 5 minutes TEDTalk about the demise of guys. Whilst writing this Food for Thought I found this newer and longer TED (24 minutes) in which he presents more research on the subject of boys failing and encourages us to think about what we can do to create a better future. There are some quite alarming statistics in this talk that need to be reflected upon if we are to develop the school experience to improve boys engagement. In the last third of the talk Zombardo gives plenty of strategies that can be evolved to help address some of these issues, some of which we are already touching on at ISHCMC
Here is another talk, shorter at 12 minutes, that raises some of the same issues that are emerging regarding boys and ends with a lovely story that involves John Lennon.
I don't think there is an easy solution for education and this recent trend in boys performance. Of course there has been much debate about single sex schools and how they are better or worse for boys and girls. This article from the Daily Telegraph captures this discussion very well, providing the pros and cons of both systems. However, for ISHCMC there are not any plans to become a single sex school so we have to look at how we can make our co-educational environment optimal for both genders. In my reading for this post I read a synopsis of an experiment that involved looking at gender performance in Math and Languages. It's conclusion perhaps points us in a direction that encourages gender differentiation in certain subjects and not others.
"In sum, single-sex schooling improves the performance of female students in mathematics classes but not in language classes, suggesting that reducing gender-based stereotype threat has real effects on academic performance. Moreover, female students who demonstrated high pre-existing ability on the entrance exam benefitted the most from single-sex classrooms, which underlines the relationship between the beneficial effects of all-girls schooling to the absence of gender-specific stereotype threats."
I hope this post has given you Food for Thought. There is obviously no easy solution to the trend of boys failing in school and the workplace. It is also clear that not all the solutions lie within schools and that parents and society in general have to play their part. The question for us is to listen to what researchers are saying and perhaps adjust what we are doing to assist both boys and girls fulfilling their full potential at ISHCMC.
Have a good weekend,
Yours
Adrian
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