Why Are Males Seen As The Gender Of Failure

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In this essay I will be looking into the theory why boys are now seen by many as the gender of failure in Education. Until the mid 1980s, boys outperformed girls in schools up to the age of eleven. This was seen as natural, except by feminists. The impact of feminist research changed many attitudes in schools so that there were educational policies that set out to raise the attainment of girls. By the mid 1980s, girls and boys were achieving equally well. Girls are now up to this day consistently outperforming boys at all levels and in almost every subject. This is a cause for concern by many politicians and media publications. In the 1960s, boys achieved results that were on average 5% better than girls. Until the mid 1980s, boys outperformed girls at all levels of the education system, up to the age of eleven. Most educational writers read this as being 'proof' that girls were generally less intelligent than boys and that boys were 'late developers'. In general, until the 1980s girls were usually offered a curriculum that prepared them for life in the home whereas boys were offered practical subjects such as woodwork and metal work or were encouraged to study academic subjects. Schoolbooks were even written with the focus firmly on males. Even the common style of school uniform was masculine clothing of a jacket, shirt and tie, only modified with a skirt for girls. This reinforced the hidden curriculum idea that education and intelligence were masculine. In the mid-1980s, both genders began to improve their school performance significantly. The improvement of girls was more rapid than that for boys. Females are now no longer the gender associated with underachievement. They outperformed boys at every key stage level in 2007. Girls outperformed boys at GCSE in 2007 by 9.1 percent. Boys' achievement has been rising alongside girls' since the 1980s; but girls' all
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