Ireland: Focus on girls' exam success masks deeper concerns

Article here. Excerpt:

'As a 2007 Department of Education and Science report, Sé Sí – Gender in Irish Education, points out, girls have been outscoring boys in English and Irish since the 1930s. What has changed is the extent of the difference. However, girls also now do better than boys in so-called “non-traditional” areas such as maths and the sciences. Applied maths was the only maths subject in which boys outshone girls in the 2009 Leaving Cert.

Some people frame the discussion in terms of gender wars, as proof that men are now becoming the oppressed species. Others wonder what the fuss is about. Is this not just a good news story for girls? Or is the “feminisation of education” a genuine concern?

The gender issue matters, but not because girls are achieving higher levels of honours. In fact, framing the problem in this way may be distracting from two deeper and related problems. The first is that, far from worrying about honours, there are huge numbers of young people leaving school without adequate qualifications. The second is that there are profound problems with our educational system.'