Australia: Teaching has become feminised and boys lose out

Article here. Excerpt:

'I always laughed at the joke - "Why do men die before women? Because they can" - until I read the latest report from the Council for Australian Governments titled Tracking equity: Comparing out-comes for women and girls across Australia.
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Based on the results for the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment of 15-year-olds the average difference between girls and boys in literacy is 37 points, representing one full year of schooling.

In the 2011 PIRLS test girls also do better than boys in reading both internationally and in Australia by 17 points. The advantage girls have over boys is also reflected in Australia's national literacy tests at years 3, 5, 7 and 9 where girls always outperform boys.
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Since the late '60s and early '70s, mainly due to the rise of feminism and the fact that there are so few male primary school teachers, the way teachers teach and the way classrooms are structured have been feminised.

Teachers no longer stand at the front of the room and children are expected to direct their own learning in open, mixed ability classrooms. As a result, boys are easily distracted, become behavioural problems and soon fall behind.

The fact that a lot of learning adopts an open-ended, inquiry approach where teachers become guides by the side and facilitate instead of directing what should happen also works against boys' preferred learning styles.

Boys need clear direction, explicit goals, timely feedback and an orderly classroom environment where they know what they have to do and what constitutes pass and fail.

Boys also need to be taught to respect authority and to have teachers prepared to enforce a disciplined environment where there are consequences for misbehaviour.'