Part Two: Explaining Trends in the Relationship between Gender and Educational Achievement.

[Section A] Explaining the Relative Educational Underachievement of Female Students up to the 1980s.

As stated above female students outperformed male students in 16+ examinations from the late 1960s onwards but could nevertheless be said to be "under-achieving at GCE Advanced Level so that they were also less likely than males to enrol on undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Sociological studies from the 1960s to the 1980s focussed on the educational disadvantages which  female students faced within society generally and within the education system in particular. These studies, although now rather dated ,remain important  partly as  useful analyses of their time and also because they may point to still existing  disadvantages which  prevent females from improving their educational achievements even more than they have done in recent years.

In this section  of the document  I shall be provide information on these earlier studies before concentrating in Section B] on the extent of and reasons for the relative improvement of female educational qualifications since the late 1980s. It will be important also to relate the analysis of gender and educational achievement to relationships between social class, ethnicity and educational achievement.

Three  main types of theory  were used to explain the relative educational underachievement of female pupils.

• Biologically based theories

• Theories based upon overall gender differences in socialisation throughout UK society.

• Theories focussing especially on the organisation of schools.

• Biologically based theories

With regard to biologically based theories, it has variously been argued  throughout history that women have smaller brains than men,  that the different shapes of male and female brains give men advantages in mathematical and technical subjects and that women are more likely than men to be ruled by their emotions.

Since steam may by now be escaping from students' ears  it is important to note immediately that such ideas have been subjected to massive criticisms which are listed below.

1. It should be noted that relative to average body weight female brains are actually larger than male brains.
2. Even though the limitations of IQ tests are well known ,data  derived from IQ tests do not suggest that females are less intelligent than males.
3. Some psychologists have produced data to suggest that female babies have inherently superior linguistic abilities relative to male babies.
4. Since , in any case, average female educational achievements have surpassed males' at all levels of the UK education system , claims that females are intellectually inferior have been revealed as totally unsupportable. 

• Theories based upon overall gender differences in socialisation throughout  UK society.

There have also been sociologically based arguments suggesting that females' relative educational under achievement  could have been explained by gender differences in the socialisation process as it operates in UK society and other similar societies. The Socialisation Process  is a very important concept in Sociology which refers to the various mechanisms which operate in the socialisation agencies[ such as the family, the education system, the Church, the mass media and the work place to ensure that individuals accept the values, attitudes and norms of their society.

Perhaps the best known study which emphasised the importance of gender socialisation as an influence on educational achievement was Sue Sharpe's "Just Like a Girl[1976]. Sue Sharpe  concluded on the basis of a study of mainly working class girls in London in the early 1970s that their main concerns  were "love, marriage, children, jobs and careers more or less in that order." Clearly, if these girls saw careers as a relatively  insignificant  priority , they would have been unlikely  to attach much importance to the gaining of educational qualifications. [However when she  repeated the research in the 1990s, she found that careers ranked much more highly in the order of girls' priorities which could have been a factor contributing to their increasing education achievement]

The following activity is designed to illustrate how gender differences in socialisation could , in principle, help to explain gender differences in educational achievement.

• Theories focussing on the organisation of the schools. [You should consult your textbooks for further details of the following studies.]

Sociologists also developed theories which suggested that gender differences in educational achieved could be explained by a range of factors within the organisation of schools themselves which were operating to the relative disadvantage of female students. Studies focussing on the schools themselves [for example in the work of  Lesley Best, Michelle Stanworth, B. Licht and C. Dweck and others] emphasised the following factors which might restrict girls' educational achievements.

1. Reading schemes encouraged acceptance of traditional gender roles.
2. Teachers gave less attention to girls.
3. Teachers failed to rebuke boys who verbally abused girls.
4. Boys monopolised science equipment which restricted girls' opportunities.
5. Girls' worried that if they appeared "too intelligent" this would reduce their attractiveness to boys and thereby undermine their femininity.
6. Teachers had stereotypical expectations about girls' future career prospects.
7. Girls were lacking in confidence relative to boys because of the ways in which they were treated in school.
8. Some subjects within the school curriculum [e.g. Domestic Science ]encouraged girls to see their future as housewives and mothers rather than in full-time employment.
9. Career Guidance in schools may have dissuaded some girls from continuing with their education and pursuing well paid professional careers.

It must be noted that these conclusions were all based upon small scale studies which  may, as a result not have been  representative. The studies are also now rather dated and teaching methods may now be more enlightened [perhaps not least as  a result of the insights which were provided in these earlier studies] but it is nevertheless possible that female students still suffer some of these disadvantages and  that their examination results are improving more rapidly than boys despite this.

•   Part Two: [Section B] Explaining the relative improvement in female educational achievement since the late 1980s

I have already provided detailed information elsewhere on gender differences in educational achievement at GCSE, GCE Advanced, Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels noting where possible the importance of social class and ethnicity as complicating the basic relationships between gender and educational achievement. In particular it must be emphasised that social class differences in educational achievement are much greater than gender differences in educational achievement and also that some ethnic differences in educational achievement are greater than gender differences in educational achievement.

For convenience I repeat some of this data here. 

1.  The ONS document Focus on Gender  provides information on a wide range of gender related issues. Girls have outperformed boys in 16 + examinations since at least the late 1960s but these overall gender differences in educational achievement began to increase in the late 1980s after the introduction of the GCSE. Click here for ONS data  from the above document which indicate that there has been a significant gender gap in educational achievement at GCSE level throughout the 1990s and into the 21st Century. For example,. 62% of girls and 52% of boys gained  5 or more A*-C grades at GCSE Level  in 2004. By 2009 these percentages had risen to 73.9% and 65.8% respectively. This source also provides very useful information on Gender differences in educational achievement at GCE Advanced and Undergraduate levels.  Click here and here or GCSE results 2010 from the BBC.

2. Click here for data from the BBC and follow the relevant link on the left hand side of the BBC page for data which indicate that in 2008  female students were more likely than male students to secure A and  B  grades in all Advanced Level subjects combined. This source also provides information indicating that females were more likely than males to gain A and B grades in most but not all Advanced Level subjects.  More importantly click here for  GCE Advanced Level results 2010 from the BBC

3. Table : Students in further and higher education: by type of course and sex [United Kingdom: Thousands]

4. Click here for ONS data indicating that girls out-perform boys at GCSE level in every ethnic group. These  data on gender, ethnicity and educational achievement come from the ONS document  Focus on Ethnicity and Identity . Click here for similar data  from the DCFS on percentages of pupils gaining 5 or more A*-C GCSE grades including English and Maths in 2008.  Click here and then on EXCEL Tables for the complete breakdown of GCSE results in 2009 by gender, ethnicity, free school meal eligibility and first language. [You can play for hours!]

5. Girls out-perform boys at GCSE level in every social class although of course, middle class boys out-perform working class girls. Many girls still underachieve at school and it is vital that we do not neglect  the importance of the continuing relative under-achievement of many working class girls and especially of many girls eligible for free school meals [FSM] as is indicated in the following data [ which we have already used in the Units on Social Class and Educational achievement.]

Table : Gender, Free School Meal Eligibility and Percentages of Pupils gaining 5 or more GCSE A*-C Pass Grades

  Click here and then click on EXCEL [excel tables]  for DCFS data on  annual data from 2002-2008 on gender, FSM eligibility and GCSE performance.

The  relative improvement in female examination performance at all levels has attracted considerable mass media attention. Recent research shows that females out -perform males in all ethnic groups and in all social classes but that for example middle class males continue to out-perform working class females and that overall social class differences in educational performance are much greater than overall gender differences in educational performance.

8. If you wish you may  Click here for an article from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Site on the difficulties which some girls continue to face within the UK education system.

• The Relative Improvement in Female Educational Achievement since the Late 1980s: A Summary.

Females have outperformed males in 16+ examinations from the 1960s onwards and  this achievement gap has widened from the late 1980s onward not because boys results are getting worse but because girls' results are improving faster than boys' results .

Girls have traditionally outperformed  boys especially in English, Foreign Languages and Humanities subjects  and relative female examination results have increased in these subjects since the late 1980s while  female examination pass rates in Science subjects and Mathematics have also improved significantly. It is  important to note that, prior to the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988 , Sciences were optional subjects at 16+ level and especially Physics and Chemistry were studied disproportionately by boys and Biology disproportionately by girls. Since the Sciences are now compulsory subjects under the terms of the National Curriculum , they are studied equally by boys and girls, and girls have caught up and in some years overtaken boys , although not by much, in GCSE Maths and Science examinations and this combined with their traditionally higher examination pass rates in English, Foreign Languages and Humanities subjects explains why they are now significantly more likely than boys to gain 5 or more A*-C GCSE pass grades.  {Although boys and girls are about equally likely to study "Sciences" at GCSE Level boys are more likely than girls to study Single Science examinations while girls are more likely than boys to study composite science courses at GCSE level. Also in 2010 Male entrants were approximately 1% more likely than female entrants to gain GCSE A*-C pass grades in Maths , Physics and Biology although not in Chemistry.]

In recent years, females  have become more likely than males to enrol on GCE Advanced Level courses and to outperform males this level.  With regard to the interpretation of Advanced level Statistics we should note that the gap between female and male achievements at Advanced level has widened in recent years when measured in terms of the percentages of females and males gaining 2 or more Advanced Level passes and that female candidates  are more likely than male candidates to gain A, B or C grades in most but not all individual Advanced Level subjects. However the gender differences in performance in individual subjects at Advanced Level tends to be smaller than at GCSE level. Females are also more likely than males to enrol on Undergraduate and Postgraduate courses. As mentioned above the relative improvement of females should not be allowed to deflect attention from the continuing difficulties in education faced by many working class girls especially those whose eligibility for free school meals suggest that they are living in conditions of relative poverty.

• The relative improvement in female educational achievement since the late 1980s : Explanations

In outlining some of the explanations for relative female educational improvement since the 1980s we may distinguish between biologically based explanations and sociologically based explanations.

1. Biologically Based Arguments

• Whereas in the past there were attempts to explain the relative educational under-achievement of girls in biological terms, there are attempts nowadays to explain the improved achievements of girls in biological terms. Thus it is suggested that because girls mature physically earlier than boys, they also mature intellectually earlier than boys. Consequently:

1. by the ages of say 13-14, girls are on average more sensible;
2. they have greater powers of concentration;
3. they can organise coursework tasks more efficiently.
4. It has been suggested also that even young female infants can be shown to have superior language skills relative to young male infants and that these differences in language capabilities may well be innate.

• However sociologists argue that even if these biological factors provide part of the explanation for gender differences in educational achievement, they cannot provide the entire explanation because:

  1. girls educational performance depends upon factors other than their physical maturity;
  2. if girls do , on average, have superior linguistic skills , this may be explained at least partly  by the fact that females are more likely to have been socialised by their mothers and/or first school teachers to see reading as a "feminine activity". Meanwhile it could be suggested that many traditionally minded fathers may allegedly wish to  socialise their sons to play football and undertake other stereotypically masculine leisure pursuits rather than to indulge in the detailed study of English Literature which is seen as a stereotypically feminine activity;
  3. many boys [especially upper and middle class boys] are more sensible, have greater powers of concentration, can organise coursework more sensibly and achieve better examination passes than many girls [ and especially working class girls]  all of which suggests that gender differences in examination success do not derive solely from gender differences in physical maturity.

  2. Sociologically Based Explanations

Sociologists have argued that gender differences in educational achievement can be explained by a wide range of social, environmental factors.

1. In the first half of the 20th Century many women left employment following marriage and took on the roles of full-time housewives and mothers and, in so doing provided very significant role models for their own daughters who were consequently likely to see their futures also as full time housewives and mothers rather than in terms of gaining a better education and pursuing rewarding employment opportunities which at this time were in any case rarely available to women.
2. However the second half of the 20th Century saw significant changes in the occupational structure occurring as a result of the growth of industries based upon light assembly work, the Welfare State and the financial and commercial sectors of the economy which created more employment opportunities for  women, mainly in light assembly work, retailing and secretarial work  but also to some extent in some professional occupations such as teaching , nursing and social work and to a lesser extent in finance and in law..
3. Many married couples recognised   quickly that they could improve their family living standards very significantly if married women returned to work even while their children were still  young .
4. The increased availability of labour saving goods combined with some increased willingness of some husbands to help with  housework and childcare  and the increased opportunities for adult social interaction at work all made returning to employment an attractive option for many married women. Consequently these working mothers were now providing much different role models for their daughters to follow.
5. Sociologists had often noted that a large proportion of infant and primary school teachers were women and that this may have reinforced the traditional view that women were especially suited for childcare rather than "real work" since this early years teaching was perceived as simply an extension of the mothering role. However by the 1980s it began to be argued that because young children were being taught to read mainly by women [their mothers and/or female teachers], this strengthened the children's' perception that reading was mainly a female rather than a male activity which is now believed to help to explain the relatively rapid linguistic development of girls.

Activity 1.In the first half of the 20th Century many married women were full-time housewives. How may this fact have affected female attitudes to education? 2 What factors encouraged an increasing proportion of married women to remain in employment after marriage in the second half of the 20th Century?. 3 How may the increased employment of married women  have affected their daughters' attitudes to education? 4.Why might reading be perceived by some children as a female rather than a male activity? Is this more likely to be the case among working class children than among middle and upper class children?

6. Feminist political activity had helped to persuade governments to introduce the Equal Pay act of 1970 and the Sex discrimination Act of 1975 which outlawed both the payment of unequal wages to males and females for equal work and various forms of discrimination in the workplace and in the education system. These Acts have been insufficient to remove all gender discrimination but they have contributed to a climate in which female employment opportunities could improve. which increased female career aspirations.
7. Female employment opportunities increased further from the 1970s onwards as a result of the growth of the Service Sector of the economy  which resulted in the growth of employment opportunities considered suitable for women. Much of the new service sector employment involved relatively low pay but some new well paid professional jobs were created and their increased availability may have provided a stimulus for more female students to prioritise education.
8. Even if few teenage girls in the 1980s would have actively described themselves as feminists, it is likely that they were influenced increasingly by feminist ideas. particularly those of the liberal feminist variety, which seemed to confirm many of their own experiences of life. For example

• these girls may have seen that their mothers had been denied good employment opportunities partly because of their limited education;
• they saw that their full-time employed mothers were still forced to shoulder a disproportionate share of housework and childcare responsibilities and that they themselves were often forced to help around the house more than their brothers;
• they saw that actual marital relationships were not heavily based upon romantic love;
• that the housewife-mother role might offer only limited personal fulfilment;
• and they saw that marriages were increasingly likely to end in divorce which meant that divorced women might be forced to support themselves and their children financially in later life  and that better educational qualifications would enable them to do so.

9. Feminists argued that women were entitled to equal rights in education, in the family and in employment.
10. As a result more female students came to think that if they were likely to spend more time in paid employment, they might prefer an interesting, well paid career as an alternative to marriage, or to pursue a career and marry a little later or that they might wish to return to their career after marriage or that a career would provide them with financial security if their marriage should increase in divorce which was statistically increasingly likely.  Sue Sharpe’s repetition in 1994]  of her 1970s research  showed that in the 1990s, female school students were now attaching much more significance to their careers and as a result giving  increasing priority to their education.

Activity How may female attitudes to education have been affected by the implementation of the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act? How might female attitudes to education have been affected by the growth of the Service Sector of the economy? Find out the meaning of the term "liberal feminism". How might female attitudes to education have been affected by their increased recognition of the possible  instability of married life?

11. Feminists of the 1960s to the 1980s had undertaken  several detailed   studies [such as those mentioned  in the previous section of this document] which had pointed to the educational disadvantages suffered by female students and as a result education policies were gradually adopted which could be expected to improve female educational prospects at least too some extent.

• Teacher Training courses and school inspections gave increasing attention to gender equality issues and textbooks and other resources may have gradually improved.
• The National Curriculum made Sciences compulsory at GCSE level which increased the proportion of females taking these subjects.
• The initiatives of organisations such as GIST [Girls into Science and Technology] and WISE [Women into Science and Engineering] may have helped to make the sciences more attractive to females although the effectiveness of these initiatives should not be overstated. In the GIST programme[1979-1983] researchers worked  in 10 co-educational comprehensive schools to try to raise teacher awareness of equal opportunities issues and to encourage more girls to opt for Sciences at GCE and CSE levels. The final report concluded that the initiative had improved girls' attitudes to Science and Technology only  slightly ; that girls' enrolments in GCE and CSE Science increased only slightly; and that  the teachers , although sympathetic to the programme said that they had not modified their teaching practices substantially as a result. However the GIST initiative could be regarded as an early pilot programme which has encouraged many subsequent equal opportunities initiatives.  The WISE programme was set up as a national initiative by the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Engineering Council and was designed to raise awareness of the need for more female scientists and technologists and to emphasise the attractiveness for girls, young women and older women seeking to retrain of  careers in Science and Technology. WISE is still in operation and its website points out that whereas about 20 years ago only 4% of Engineering undergraduates were women the figure for 2009 was 13%. Obviously WISE itself may well have contributed to this increase at least to some extent.  
• The introduction of the GCSE resulted also in the introduction of course work as a means of assessment alongside examinations and a coursework element was soon introduced also into Advanced Level courses.
• Some explained this relatively rapid improvement in girls' educational achievements once the GCSE had been introduced mainly in terms of girls' allegedly superior organisational skills which enabled them to complete the newly introduced coursework tasks more effectively. Others have suggested that the reality is much more complex : it could be argued, for example, that coursework assignments test especially depth of understanding as well as organisational skills and that in any case girls' relative educational improvement must be explained by a wide ranging combination of factors operative inside and outside of the schools rather than solely by changes to the system of assessment at GCSE level. Furthermore the fact that relative improvements in female educational achievements are occurring in many countries suggests that they cannot be explained in the UK solely by the introduction of the GCSE.
• A recent [June 2009] report emphasised the view that gender differences in educational achievement were to a considerable extent explained by the nature of GCSE assessment methods. Click here for the Observer coverage of this report. It should be noted , however, that the report quickly attracted several criticisms.
• Also as schools were assessed and located in published league tables on the basis of school examination performance it made no sense for them to neglect the factors restricting girls' educational performance [although some have argued that the "excessive attention" given to the difficulties of girls results in a neglect of the difficulties of boys.

Activity How may recent educational changes have encouraged female educational aspirations?

• The combined effects of the above factors mean that nowadays  many  more women are in paid employment in general and that a growing minority of well educated women are employed in a widening range of interesting well paid careers. These successful   women must surely provide positive role models for girls whose interest in education has in any case increased..

Boys, Girls and Achievement :Addressing the Classroom Issues : Becky Francis[2000]

[See also Reassessing Gender and Achievement: Questioning contemporary key debates: Becky Francis and Christine Skelton 2005 for more information on all aspects of the relationships between Gender and Educational Achievement]

The findings of  Becky Francis  in this  study   encapsulate many of the above points . She argue that in so far as girls are improving more rapidly than boys , this is to be explained  primarily in terms of the processes affecting the social construction of femininity and masculinity. In relation to the social construction of femininity, she argues that many girls of middle school and secondary school age aim to construct feminine identities which emphasise the importance of maturity and a relatively quiet and orderly approach to school life. Girls certainly do take considerable interest in their appearance and may choose to rebel quietly by talking at the back of the class or feigning lack of interest but , according to Becky Francis, not in a way which will detract from their school studies. Their femininity is constructed in such a way that if they choose to behave sensibly and work hard this, if anything, adds to their femininity.

No evidence is found to the effect that girls nowadays worry that evidence of intelligence and hard work may render them unattractive to boys  and attitudes within female friendship groups are likely to strengthen rather than undermine girls' commitment to their school work. although ,admittedly , however, girls do not wish to be perceived as "nerds", interested in school work and nothing else. Increasingly also  by comparison , say with the girls interviewed by Sue Sharpe in the first edition of "Just Like a Girl" teenage girls nowadays have gradually come to prioritise the importance of gaining good academic qualifications as a means of improving their own career prospects rather than assuming that their future employment is likely to be of secondary importance by comparison with their likely future roles as housewives and mothers.

Thus the girls in Becky Francis sample express interest in a relatively wide variety of careers; are relatively unlikely to favour stereotypical female careers such as nurse, clerical worker or air hostess ; are quite likely to express interest in careers usually associated with men and very likely to express interest in careers for which further education, higher education and a degree will be necessary. However broadly traditional patterns of career choice do remain in that the girls are more likely to choose careers associated with the Humanities or the caring professions than with Science, Mathematics or Engineering. Also very importantly the girls believe strongly that they are likely to face gender discrimination in employment and Becky Francis sees this as a major reason why girls are increasingly keen to work hard to achieve good educational qualifications.

This is  clearly a very useful study which rightly focuses heavily on the social constructions  of masculinity and femininity as key influences on male and female educational achievement. Becky Francis presents a very positive description of secondary school girls' femininity which helps them in several ways to make educational progress. However I am sure that she would recognise that not all female students approach school in such a positive way and that many female students [mainly working class female students] adopt their own forms of anti-school pupil which undermine  their educational prospects  in much the same way as "laddish" behaviour undermines the educational prospects of many mainly working class male students.

Also Click here for  a summary of  a recent [2009] report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission which suggests that  Becky Francis' research may perhaps understate the extent of ongoing significant gender differences in perceived career prospects  and calls for better advice on subject choice and career choice. 

•  The Relative Improvement of Female Educational Achievement: A Checklist

1. Change in the occupational structure.
2. The increased employment of married women since 1945 and their significance as role models.
3. Female infant and primary school teachers as female role models.
4. The Equal Pay Act[1970] and the Sex Discrimination Act [1975]
5. The gradual influence of feminist ideas drawing upon critical sociological studies of the 1970s and 1980s.
6. Changes in the social construction of femininity.
7. Changing perceptions of family, career and education
8. Changes within the formal educational system: National Curriculum, GCSE, Gist and WISE, Teaching Materials and Methods, Careers Advice, League Tables.
9. The increased visibility of positive female role models.

However remember to analyse interrelationships between gender, social class, ethnicity and educational achievement.

Part Three: Explaining the Slower Rate of Improvement in Male Educational Achievement.

We have seen that many reasons have been suggested for the improved educational achievements of female students at all levels of the UK education system. It is true also that male educational achievements are improving but they are simply improving at a slower rate than female achievements . What factors might restrict the rate of educational improvement of male students?

In the documents  on Social Class and Educational Achievement it was shown that even 30 or 40 years ago many working class boys were likely to develop anti-school subcultures as a general aspect of working class culture [as, for example, in the Willis study] or in response to streaming within the schools [as, for example, in the Hargreaves study] or as a result of both working class cultural factors and school organisational factors [as ,for example,  in Phil Brown's study].

1.   It was suggested that, for some working class boys , education was essentially an irrelevance because they hoped in any case to find the kind of physically demanding, unskilled manual work which would confirm their masculinity but which required few educational qualifications. Contrastingly  academic study and non-manual employment were associated with femininity and therefore dismissed as unsuitable in every  respect.
2. Also within the anti-school subcultures, male pupils gained status among their peers not through respect for school rules and hard academic work but through disruptive behaviour of various kinds which ultimately would restrict their own academic progress.
3. It must be recognised that the relative decline of manufacturing industry since the 1980s has resulted in a decline in both unskilled and skilled manual work yet a significant minority of working class boys may still hope   for the kind of physically demanding unskilled work which is often no longer available  and these boys may still be trying to gain status with their peers via disruptive, "laddish", "macho" anti-school behaviour.
4. These boys may be especially likely to misbehave in class and serious misbehaviour may mean that they are excluded temporarily from class or even permanently from school. Boys are in fact about 5 times more likely than girls to be permanently excluded from school.
5. It has been argued that some boys are  therefore experiencing a crisis of masculinity in that they have as yet been unable to adapt their behaviour in school to the changing economic circumstances which means that they are increasingly likely to face limited job prospects and unemployment if they fail to adopt a more positive attitude to school work and gaining educational qualifications.
6. However even in the 1970s only a minority of working class boys rejected the education system outright in this way while most conformed at least to some extent in the hope of picking up useful practical skills and reasonable school references which would help them in their search for employment. Nowadays increasing numbers of working class boys aim to enrol on Higher Education courses and many more will surely have recognised the increased importance of academic qualifications  for example in Computing as a means of securing skilled non- manual employment in service industries and this recognition of the changes in the facts of economic life may encourage these boys to take their education more seriously. That is: these boys will have constructed a different form of masculinity which could be confirmed not by rejection of school but academic success and by demonstrable mastery of new information technologies. [ In his 1990s studies  of different social constructions of working class masculinity  Mac An Ghaill distinguishes in this respect  between "macho lads" [akin to Willis' "lads"] ," academic achievers" and "new enterprisers"  suggesting that only a declining minority of male working class pupils now see themselves as "macho lads."
7. Nevertheless it is likely that even some of these boys will also be drawn into a "laddish" anti-school culture as a means of maintaining their status among their friends.
8. Additionally if boys are to catch up girls at GCSE level, it will be especially important for them to improve their grades in English, Foreign Languages and Humanities where the performance gap is largest. Yet there is evidence that girls have  been more heavily socialised from an early age by parents and teachers to read and it may also be seen as a more feminine trait to express opinions on the kinds of personal issues which arise in Arts and Humanities subjects  all of which puts some boys at a disadvantage in these subjects.
9. It has been argued even fairly recently  that teachers have failed to appreciate the educational disadvantages that boys actually face. so that they may assume incorrectly that "laddish" behaviour is relatively harmless and make few attempts to correct it.
10. It  may be argued also that the kind of negative labelling investigated in earlier units may apply nowadays especially to many mainly working class boys who may continue to be labelled by teachers as lacking in ability and/or interest and that teachers' ongoing emphasis on relative failure[ not the relatively slow progress] of boys  may by now be convincing some boys that they are actually incapable of progress.
11. There may be some truth in the two previous  points   but it is also the case that, nowadays, teachers spend huge amounts of time on the investigation of boys' relative underachievement which may undermine the notions that they fail to take "laddish" behaviour seriously  and that negative labelling is still widespread. However there are also recent studies which suggest that negative labelling of both male and female working class students is still widespread as was shown in previous documents on social class differences in educational achievement.
12. There are also arguments that insufficient attention has been given to the possibilities that boys and girls learn in different ways and may therefore need different types of teaching.

Click here for a recent relevant BBC item  suggesting the possibility that primary school teaching strategies should be reconsidered so as to improve boys' educational prospects.

.

Activity 1. Are male examination results getting worse? 2 .Whose average examination results are better: middle class males' or working class females'? 3.What do you understand by the term "laddish, macho, anti-school culture"? 4.How may changes in the occupational structure have affected male attitudes to education? 5.How would you explain the facts that although male and female GCSE pass rates  in Maths and Sciences are very similar, females out-perform males very considerably in English at GCSE level? 6. In your opinion , do teachers take "laddish" behaviour seriously enough?

 

• Part  Four: Appendix:  Backlash Arguments, Moral Panics and the Underclass

In her study "Backlash: The Undeclared War against Women [1992] Susan Faludi argued that in the USA women were increasingly told especially in the more conservative sections of the mass media that they had now achieved economic equality with men  but that this economic progress had come at considerable cost to themselves in that career women in their mid 30s were allegedly prone to infertility; that unmarried and/or childless women were especially prone to depression and that the ultimate cause of these difficulties was FEMINISM. Faludi rejected such arguments and argued very strongly that male -female employment opportunities and earnings differences were still considerable and that if, anything, fulltime housewives were more likely than employed women to be unhealthy.

In the UK some sociologists argued that in some sections of the mass media the evidence of relative female educational improvement was presented in  away  which suggested that it had occurred because teachers[ perhaps influenced by feminism] had focussed excessively on the educational needs of female students to the detriment of males students who had consequently fallen behind . These arguments too could be interpreted as to some extent examples of "backlash" arguments against alleged excessive influence of feminism within the teaching profession and calling for educational changes which would effectively address the educational needs of boys.

Not all sociologists agree that these backlash arguments have gained much prominence in the UK and in any case they have been widely criticised on the grounds that other explanations of relative female improvement [ as listed above] are more powerful and that it is unrealistic to assume that in an education system increasingly driven by examination results and league table positions teachers would prioritise the education of girls rather than boys which would also fly in the face of natural justice.

The concept of a "moral panic" derives from the Sociology of Crime and Deviance and has been defined by Stan Cohen in his study of Mods and Rockers entitled "Folk Devils and Moral Panics". as follows:

Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests: its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. Sometimes the object of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes the panic is passed over and is forgotten except in folklore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious and long lasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal or social policy or even in the way society conceives itself.

Some complex issues are involved in this definition but essentially the definition suggests that dominant economic and social groups and their representatives in the economic and political systems in the mass media have a vested interest in the continuation of the current economic and political system which after all safeguards their relative economic privilege and that they will therefore initiate  and perpetuate critical campaigns against "problem groups" of "folk devils" whose existence appears to pose a challenge to the status quo. The behaviour of such groups is stigmatised as anti-social and in need of correction if social order is to be maintained although from a more critical perspective it can be argued that it is the nature of the social order itself which promotes the development of "problem groups" of "folk devils."

Female relative educational improvement has been linked also with the development of a "moral panic" surrounding the alleged development of a so-called UK underclass . It is usual to distinguish between cultural and structural versions of the underclass theory. The cultural version is associated especially with the American New Right theorist Charles  Murray who argues that excessive growth of welfare state spending has created a culture of dependency among a new underclass comprising especially single mothers and uneducated , unskilled, poorly paid and often unemployed young men for whom their culture of dependency upon the welfare state has destroyed their capacity to climb out of poverty through their own efforts. The solution, for Murray, is  the restriction of welfare state benefits as a means of reactivating personal responsibility and initiative.

In structural versions of the underclass theory [such as those of William Julius Wilson] it is the structural inequalities associated with national and international capitalism rather than the cultural characteristics of the poor which explain the existence of the underclass. Capitalism is seen as an inevitable exploitative economic system generating both economic inequality and poverty and in recent years the relocation of manufacturing industry from the "advanced" capitalist economies to the "Third World" has been a major cause of the high levels of unemployment which has in turn resulted in increased economic inequality and poverty. A poor underclass exists not because its members are fatalistic, feckless and work shy but because the manufacturing jobs on which they have traditionally depended have been relocated to the "Third World" . However  unemployment and poverty can themselves contribute to further despondency among the unemployed and the poor which suggests that the development of the underclass is explicable by structural factors but that its continuation occurs partly as  a result of  induced cultural despondency.

In both types of theory it is argued that the slow rate of male educational improvement is a factor which contributes to  the growth of  the underclass as uneducated young men are increasingly unable to find work in an increasingly technologically based economy. However Charles Murray focussed originally on the USA and claimed that a major factor driving the growth of the underclass was the growth of single motherhood which according to him was encouraged by overgenerous welfare benefits so that it is not only the slow rate of male educational improvement which drives the growth of the underclass.

In any case some sociologists reject all theories of the underclass arguing instead that millions of working class people are continually moving in and out of poverty as a result of chance changes in their economic circumstances so that there is no significant barrier between the underclass and the rest of the working class and also that there are no significant differences in attitudes to work between the poor and the rest of society in that the vast majority of poor people would wish to escape poverty via employment rather than to suffer poverty via reliance on state benefits which despite Murray's opinions are LOW rather than generous.

[You should consult your textbooks for further information on MORAL PANICS and THEORIES OF THE UNDERCLASS.]

• Conclusion

In 1994 the BBC transmitted an edition of Panorama entitled "The Future is Female" describing  the early stages of increasing relative female educational achievement. Yesterday evening [August 10th 2009] I watched BBC Two' s "The Trouble with Girls: 3 Girls and 3 Pregnancies." which investigated the lives of three 15-16 year old working class girls in Rochdale. Clearly these were not typical working class girls.: they truanted regularly; drank alcohol excessively; used soft and hard drugs and could be violent and racist. Two of the girls had pinned their hopes on an Army career  but were told in  a preliminary interview that they could not in any case be accepted on health grounds. Two of the girls had become pregnant and the third is to become pregnant in the next episode

Females are nowadays on average more successful than males at all levels of the education system but not all females are educationally successful and not all females share similar futures. The same conclusions apply to males.