Frequently Asked Questions

• Materials and guidance such as the 'Raising Boys' Achievement' booklet produced by the National Healthy Schools Campaign, which is a toolkit for school improvement. It addresses the current gender gap in pupil performance and is intended to support self-review, identify the priorities in a school, and to recommend the kinds of tried-and-tested strategies that will help achievement.
  
  
• The Raising Boys' Achievement Project which looked at exciting and innovative ways of raising achievement across a range of primary, secondary, and special schools to identify and evaluate strategies which are particularly helping motivating boys.
  
  
• The National Year of Reading, is promoting reading for pleasure. It helps to tackle underachievement through projects such as Reading Champions, a nationwide scheme that aims to find and celebrate positive male role models for reading.
  
  
• Playing for Success uses football and other sports to boost skills and motivation among pupils. Four national evaluations have found significant improvements in literacy and numeracy skills, ICT skills, attitudes to learning, and self-esteem. Feedback from teachers, parents and pupils is overwhemingly positive. 
  
  
• LA Educational Development Plans (for the period 2002 to 2007) included gender issues as a theme for LAs to consider when drawing up their local priorities. Most of them include strategies to tackle the issue. We are identifying the strategies used in LAs where the achievement 'gap' is least pronounced with a view to sharing them more widely with other LAs.
  
  
• The Gender agenda site, which is run on the Teachernet website, is designed to involve schools, local authorities and the research community in discussion of important gender issues and practical ideas for improving the learning, as well as the motivation, involvement and attainment of particular groups of underperforming girls and boys. These issues and ideas are shared at specific events, on this site and through various publications and media. Details of the events and of case studies are posted on the site.
  The Gender Agenda

• girls' greater maturity and more effective learning strategies at all ages, and the emphasis amongst girls on collaboration, talk and sharing;
  
  
• (some) boys' disregard for authority, academic work and formal achievement, and the identification with concepts of masculinity which are frequently seen to be in direct conflict with the ethos of the school;
  
  
• differences in students' attitudes to work, and their goals and aspirations, linked to the wider social context of changing labour markets, de-industrialisation and male employment;
  
  
• differential gender interactions between pupils and teachers in the classroom, particularly as perceived by (some) boys;
  
  
• the influence of laddish behaviour, the bravado and noise as boys seek to define their masculinity; the inclination of many boys to act in ways in line with peer group norms, in ways which protect their macho image - itself a form of self-defence for many boys; peer group pressure against the academic work ethic, resulting in male behaviour which is less likely to know to acknowledge and accept boundaries; the influence of personal and social development, including the role of language in boys' achievement. For example girls have been observed to develop their vocabulary sooner and acquire some language concepts (such as passive voice) earlier than boys;
  
  
• boys' efforts to avoid the culture of failure, to seek explanations - through their off-task behaviour, their lack of effort in terms of class work, homework and coursework, their lack of acceptance of the aims / objectives of the school - for their poor performance in school, to protect themselves against failure and competition; the possibility of failure can lead to anger, hostility and disaffection; a 'can't do / can't win' insecurity leads to a 'won't try / don't won't play' culture, which leads to a self-sabotaging, anti-learning stance which in turn can be expressed in physical anger, fighting and dominance; such boys are seen to lack self-esteem as learners.

• Its effectiveness can be difficult to evaluate because it is often undertaken on a short-term basis, for just one year or one cohort of students. The initiative for its introduction is usually from the Department concerned, and it is mainly introduced either for pragmatic reasons (gender imbalance in year group or sets) or as a strategy for raising (boys') achievement.
  
  
• There is conflicting evidence over whether examination results are better for pupils taught in single-sex groups.
  
  
• Pupils are almost always in favour of single-sex groupings, especially girls.
  
  
• Single-sex teaching appears most likely to be successful where staff are fully committed to it, where there is extensive preparation of staff and students before these groupings are put in place, where gender-specific teaching strategies are used and evolve, and where there is an ethos of achievement and discipline within the school.