UK Times: "School is better without boys"

Submitted by anthony on Sun, 2009-03-22 19:39

Article here. Excerpt:

'Getting the best for girls has always been a vexed issue. Do they do better in single-sex schools or when taught alongside boys? In recent years single-sex schools have been tarred as old-fashioned and antiquated, a throwback to the Victorian era, but a report published last week looks like the last word on the issue: girls really do do better in single-sex schools.

The study, by The Good Schools Guide, followed 700,000 girls and found that those who sat GCSEs in single-sex state schools all did better than could have been predicted by their scores at the end of primary school.'

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I thought the UK was investigating the negative portrayal of teenage boys? Maybe this writer didn't get the memo.

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Submitted by anthony on Mon, 2009-03-23 20:25

"Getting the best for girls" - as opposed to what, exactly?

So, we now have a much-publicised gender education gap, with more boys than ever failing to get good grades, or dropping out altogether. More men are entering the world of work with few prospects of getting any job, let alone a well-paid job, and much has been said about the impact on society of allowing a whole generation of young men to come through with little hope of competing with their female counterparts in the workplace.

So what do we get? "School is better without boys". Brilliant. Yet again people with an interest in education are doing what they do best: obsessing with the welfare and educational outcomes of girls. These people are experts in denying the obvious, refusing to acknowledge the growing crisis in boys' education.

What are they so afraid of? Who are they scared of upsetting? It would seem that educationalists are guilty of either gender bias, since they are concerned only with the prospects of girls; or they are guilty of moral cowardice, since they are scared to speak up for those pupils for whom they should have most concern. Either way it's scary that these people are in a position to influence and shape debates around education.

This demonstrates why it is imperative for people like us to start doing something NOW - to get the boy crisis out there in public debate. If we leave it to the "experts" we will soon have these people discussing the very merits or otherwise of even educating boys at all...

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Submitted by sirprince on Tue, 2009-03-24 12:51