05 Apr 2023
Columnist Eris offers another hard-hitting opinion piece…
Almost a third of young men think they are unfairly treated by society says a recent YouGov survey. They are right.
Boys do badly at school compared to girls at all ages. They are much less likely to go to university (a 35% gap in 2018) or into further education (a 22% gap). Interestingly more women than men start apprenticeships, but the gap is only 0.2%. Men are much less likely to go into the professions. They make up only 24.6% of the entire teaching workforce, and only 35.8% of male secondary school teachers.
Every year, fewer men than women become teachers, GPs, dentists, vets or lawyers. There are double the number of female GP trainees than male.
These issues are compounded for working class boys, who have even more limited opportunities.
2016 research on why working class white boys do badly and what can be done about it is illuminating more for what it says about the researchers than the topic.
Researchers struggled to define what is ‘working class’ and ‘white’. If the research was carried out in 2023, they would probably also struggle to define a ‘boy’, having a choice of 81 genders.
They say, white, working class boys don’t get to university primarily because they don’t get good enough results at school. Their solution being to teach them better when young. No shit Sherlock!!! They don’t comment on why schools are failing these boys. It then ‘blames’ the boys and their parents.
Parents are aspirational when their boys are young, but by the time they are 17/18…not so much. They don’t explain why this happens, but state that boys don’t want to go to university, even when they get the academic results, as they think it’s going to be an expensive waste of their time and they would rather start earning immediately. Boys don’t understand the university entrance process, what being there entails or the benefits of a degree. The report recommends engaging with parents and teachers to give better info to boys.
The reports simply do not comment on some rather obvious points. First, girls from the same background are doing better. Second, it is the role of schools to educate, instruct and inform, so perhaps it is the schools and their predominantly female teaching workforce who are letting boys in general and white, working class boys in particular down.
We don’t know, because the Department for Education does not fund any initiatives that just focus on addressing boys’ underachievement. Parents who can afford to are taking matters into their own hands. 10,000 more boys than girls attend private schools in this country, attracted by an ethos of lots of daily sport, healthy competition, strictly enforced discipline and a high proportion of male teachers.
Could it really be as simple as more male teachers, more discipline, more sport, more competition (eg exams not continuous assessment) and better careers counselling? Or will our female-centric education establishment react negatively to this change of teaching culture to make it fairer?
