Im going to write to my old school about this. Heading 1. happened to me a lot

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2011/dec/16/boy-friendly-teaching

This reminds me of another article where they did a boy friendly appraoch (the specifcs mentiond in article of what that actually means) and boys results dramtically improved, gender gap went but also girls performance shot up too.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept06/vol64/num01/Teaching-to-the-Minds-of-Boys.aspx

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1. BOYS SYSTEMATICALLY BEING DISCRIMINATED AGAINST:

Also lets not forget the bias either. OECD large cale study showed that girls were given higher marks for IDENTICAL work to boys. OECD also showed that a boy receives 1/3 higher grade if the teacher does not know he is a boy

https://bbc.co.uk/news/education-31751672

Also despite the commonly held belief women are widely favoured in acpplications when gender is known. Gender blid actually massively helps men! Large study shows women prefferd 2:1 over identical males

https://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360

2. BOYS BEING GVEN LOWER GRADES DESPITE PERFORMING BETTER THAN GIRLS FROM DAY 1

Examining student test scores and grades of children in kindergarten through fifth grade, Cornwell found that boys in all racial categories are not being “commensurately graded by their teachers” in any subject “as their test scores would predict.”

The answer lies in the way teachers, who are statistically mostly women, evaluate students without reference to objective test scores. Boys are regularly graded well below their actual academic performance.

Boys are falling significantly behind in grades, “despite performing as least as well as girls on math tests, and significantly better on science tests.”

After fifth grade, he found, student assessment becomes a matter of “a teacher’s subjective assessment of the student’s performance”, and is further removed from the guidance of objective test results. Teachers, he says, tend to assess students on non-cognitive, “socio-emotional skills.” This has had a significant impact on boys’ later achievement because, while objective test scores are important, it is teacher-assigned grades that determine a child’s future with class placement, high school graduation and college admissibility.

Eliminating the factor of “non-cognitive skills…almost eliminates the estimated gender gap in reading grades”, Cornwell found. He said he found it “surprising” that although boys out-perform girls on math and science test scores, girls out-perform boys on teacher-assigned grades.

The report also found that:

  • At primary level 85% of teachers are female. This has remained roughly the same since 2003.
  • At secondary level the percentage of male teachers has fallen steadily at first and later precipitously from 40% in 2003 to 31.7% in 2012.

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COMMENTS:

Mary Curnock Cook, the chief executive of UCAS, undergraduate courses at university and college UK, believes the “potential of young men is somehow being let down by the school system”. This suggests that the methods and techniques used to prepare pupils for their GCSEs and A-levels are angled more towards female students, and that schools and sixth forms may not be preparing boys adequately enough for these academic hurdles.

Wells continues:

“Additionally, recent years have seen a steady growth of campaigns encouraging female students to pursue higher education. After it was discovered that only 13 per cent of STEM (scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical) courses were populated by women, a considerable push has been made to raise these numbers. However, no such corresponding campaigns have been launched to encourage either working class or disillusioned young men into university.

“And this is despite Universities Minister David Willetts claiming, two years ago, that the government needed to target working class boys for university places in the same way that the institutions are obligated to fill quotas for ethnic minorities and other under-represented groups. It’s feasible that the gender divide we now face is a direct result of girls having been targeted more actively for places than boys…

“But in a climate eager to dispel any suspicion of misogyny, these once male-dominated institutions are now overcompensating by offering girls opportunities that simply aren’t available to the male student population.

What is clear is that despite acknowledging this gap, the government and the universities themselves appear untroubled or simply indifferent to the divide.”