Report

Press Release

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The issue of boys’ aggregate lower achievement than girls has been longstanding. As this international research project has found, this holds across jurisdictions, national borders and individual institutions. There are of course exceptions. There is also plenty of evidence of many boys doing well. Indeed, in mathematics boys hold a small advantage over girls. But what is driving this consistent picture of relative under performance by boys? Why are so many boys struggling in a variety of education systems? And importantly what can be done to change things? This last question the Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys (CPRMB) is trying to address for England through its Boys’ Education Commission.

In this second report (in a series of three), produced by CPRMB Research Fellow, Jordan Hill, he has looked closely at the contexts that affect boys’ educational outcomes across the high-income countries that are the focus of the research. The report looks at the reasons why a small disadvantage when boys start school relative to girls turns into a substantial gap in achievement and outcomes for so many at the end of school.

Executive summary

Part II of the International Literature Review on Boys' Education examines the contexts that shape boys' educational outcomes across high-income countries. Following on from part I, which described the gaps, part II asks what conditions contribute to them. It does so across four areas: developmental patterns, socio-economic conditions, gender norms and expectations, and the design of education systems.

One argument runs through the review. Boys and girls bring modest average differences into school and leave with substantial gaps in achievement and attainment. The differences at the start are real but small, and the two groups overlap far more than they differ. The gaps at the end are amplified along the way rather than given at the start.

Boys' outcomes are more tied to local socio-economic conditions than girls' are.

That holds most clearly for long-run trajectories into work and for progression into higher education. It does not hold for the gap in reading and language, which is large, present in almost every place studied, and mostly unexplained by local socio-economic conditions. Local conditions often determine the socio-economic composition of schools. This bears differently on boys and girls, with boys gaining more from an advantaged intake.

Developmental patterns matter mainly because schooling fixes consequences to age.

Girls develop self-regulation earlier, boys are on average more physically active, and pubertal timing differs. None of these is large enough on its own to account for the gaps Part I described. They become consequential because an education system decides at what age a child starts school, when it sorts students, and when it certifies attainment. Each of those decisions captures boys at a less developmentally mature point than girls. Boys' underachievement reflects the interaction between modest developmental differences, such as later brain maturation and pubertal timing, and the institutional, social and economic conditions in which boys grow up and learn. The conditions, rather than boys themselves, are where the room for action lies.

Gender norms shape what confers status among boys, and status runs against much of what school rewards.

Dominant masculine scripts, such as ‘lad culture’, often discourage visible effort, help-seeking and reading. Most boys do not hold those scripts in their strongest form, but departing from them carries a cost among peers. Norms of this kind do not shift as a society becomes more equal, and boys' stereotypes about what they are suited to are visible well before secondary school. Importantly, the evidence also demonstrates that masculinities are diverse, adaptable and shaped by institutional environments, suggesting that schools can play a positive role in fostering forms of masculinity that are compatible with academic engagement and aspiration.

The design of education systems shapes the size of the gap a system records.

Being held back a year or more (grade retention) is a gate that boys pass through more often than girls, even at the same level of measured performance. Whether a boy repeats a year depends substantially on which school he attends. Sorting decisions (e.g. tracking, streaming and setting) place boys downwards more often than their measured performance accounts for, and movement back up is rare. The balance between teacher-assigned grades and standardised examinations changes the size and sometimes the direction of the recorded gap. How schools are held accountable is also crucial, as accountability systems determine which students a school directs its attention towards. Each of these is a design choice rather than a fact about children.

The review makes nine recommendations.

The strongest concern grade retention, which should be minimised, and the age of selection into different educational tracks and streams, where boys' underachievement is not a reason to select earlier. Others address the limits of recruiting more male teachers, curricular prescription in reading and language, the choice between threshold and growth school accountability measures, the balance between grades and examinations, the use of vocational routes as a default destination for struggling boys, teacher preparation for the classrooms where struggling boys are concentrated, and building movement into the school day.

Recommendations

• Minimise grade retention.
• The evidence on tracking age is not an argument for selecting earlier.
• Recruiting more male teachers should not be expected to raise boys' achievement.
• Where a system prescribes closely what and how reading and language are taught, expect that to bear more heavily on boys.
• Choose accountability rules knowing which students they direct attention towards.
• Do not choose an assessment regime by the size of the gap it displays.
• Vocational and technical routes should be a positive choice, not a default destination for struggling boys.
• Build teacher preparation for the classrooms in which struggling boys are concentrated.
• Build movement into the school day.

The review does not endorse changes that improve one group's outcomes by worsening another's.

That applies between boys and girls, between boys and children from poorer homes, and between lower-attaining and higher-attaining students. Several of the levers examined would narrow the gender gap by lowering girls' attainment, and each is set aside on that basis. Redistribution of that kind moves who carries the cost and leaves the educational arrangements producing the gap in place. Improving boys’ education should never be a zero-sum game.

Part III turns to the drivers closest to the child, among them family and home, engagement with school, special educational needs, the learning environment and wellbeing. The evidence in Part II establishes the conditions within which those drivers operate.

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