School achievement and gender – What’s the answer to the ‘boy question’?
After making an influential contribution to the debate around boys’ education with the book Boys Don’t Try? Mark Roberts discusses its follow-up, and what has (and hasn’t) changed since…
- by Mark Roberts
What are you setting out to do with The Boy Question, in comparison with Boys Don’t Try?, and why is now the right time for a follow-up? With Boys Don’t Try? [co-authored with Matt Pinkett], our main focus was on tackling some of the myths around boys’ attainment, and re-thinking our expectations of what boys can achieve.
The massive success of the first book led to me being asked to speak to lots of teachers at conferences and during CPD sessions in schools around the country. I noticed that the same questions about teaching boys kept cropping up at the end of my talks. Things like, ‘How can I motivate boys’ to succeed in my classroom?‘ Why don’t boys do their homework?‘ ‘What can I do to improve boys’ writing?‘
The nine most significant questions became the basis for The Boy Question. With the new book, I’ve set out to create a work that, while evidence-informed, is as useful and practical as possible for the busy classroom teacher.
Given the frequent studies that suggest that boys have fallen further behind during lockdown, it seems like now is the perfect time to revisit this most important of educational issues.
What’s your general sense of the impact that the pandemic has had on boys’ attainment levels, and what factors would you put that impact down to? Anecdotally, teachers tell me that, on the whole, boys were likely to do less work than girls during the phases of remote learning. Several studies suggest that boys have been worst hit in terms of loss of learning during the pandemic. Other research appears to show that gender reading gaps have widened further during COVID, with even more boys reading less frequently for pleasure than girls.
I think this is largely explained by boys’ generally poorer study skills and lower levels of intrinsic academic motivation. When you’re left to work independently for large periods of time, you need to have that resilience and find learning innately pleasurable. Sadly, the research suggests that many boys struggle in this regard.
When observing the wider conversation around academic outcomes for boys, what important points, research findings or other details do you feel get overlooked the most? A key area, I would argue, is the need to improve boys’ writing motivation. When boys are reluctant to write, we often assume that they are lazy or lack the stamina to write at length academically. As a result, schools have often lowered expectations of boys through engagement activities and “boy-friendly” curricula.
Instead, as I argue in The Boy Question, once boys are consistently shown subject-specific writing techniques at word, sentence and whole-text level, their motivation to write will increase and their outcomes will improve.
To what extent do negative expectations around boys’ attitudes and abilities from families, peers and wider society make the job of educating boys harder – or are these expectations that can and should be kept out of boys’ experience of education? There are huge societal barriers to male academic attainment. Traditional stereotypes about masculinity largely dictate that dedication to one’s schoolwork, enjoying writing, and reading for pleasure are feminine activities. We tend to gift books to girls and toys or sports equipment to boys.
Boys are less likely to see their dads reading a book and parents are less likely to offer boys support with home-learning. If we’re going to answer the boy question, helping to tackle these pervasive beliefs, through improved parental engagement, is a key area for schools.
Regarding the longer-term outlook for male academic outcomes, what trends or developments are currently giving you cause for optimism? Advances in cognitive science are giving teachers a greater understanding of how students might learn best. Some studies suggest that boys are more likely to use the least effective study techniques and that seem to indicate that if we can teach boys how to use these skills regularly gender attainment gaps might begin to disappear.
The success of Boys Don’t Try? Means that fewer schools are perpetuating the myths of boys’ engagement. My hope is that The Boy Question can have a similar impact on teaching boys to learn most effectively.
Mark Roberts is director of research at a school in Northern Ireland, as well an English teacher and author. The Boy Question is available now (Routledge, £16.99); for more information, visit Mark’s blog at or follow @mr_englishteach.
