FEATURE: Boys in a class of their own

28th June 2006

KATHY WEBB

There's a lot of hand-wringing going on over NCEA results that suggest girls are leaving boys in the dust at high school.

Indeed, the bald statistics show an average 10 percent gap between their achievements, including subjects such as science, once the preserve of male excellence. Less clear is the explanation for this state of affairs - what is going on, why, its seriousness, or the long-term implications.

Boys find it harder than girls to learn to read.

That much is generally accepted, but that's about where the consensus ends. While some apparently believe the education system has gone to hell in a handcart thanks to feminism run amok, others suggest the biggest problem is that boys need to grow up, forget the warrior thing and find a new masculine identity.

On the academic front are arguments that boys aren't getting enough male teachers or teachers with empathy for boys. Some point to statistics that indicate boys do better socially, culturally and academically in single-sex schools where they need not compete with girls, or fear female scorn of failure. Others believe the school curriculum and assessment have been feminised, putting boys at a severe disadvantage.

Overlaying all these are the politics of the education industry - including the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office - and the brave new world of the National Certificate in Educational Achievement (NCEA), with its micro-focus on areas of learning and assessment.

Education Minister Steve Maharey says there is a problem with boys' achievement, but nothing that plenty of good-quality teachers couldn't fix.

Some men's rights groups say there is most definitely a problem and it's the result of education having been hijacked by man-hating feminists who've stacked the system and the odds against boys (and men).

Boys' schools also say there is a problem, but it could be resolved by a combination of tweaking NCEA and educating boys in an environment geared to their particular learning style.

The teachers union, the PPTA, says it's a myth that boys are falling behind, there's nothing wrong with the way they're being taught or assessed, and all that's needed is a change of attitude.

The union has posted a document on its website rejecting most points of debate in regard to girls-boys results. It says the reason girls are getting better exam marks than boys is simple: More girls than boys work harder at school, while boys are still too wrapped up in a world of irrelevant macho warrior violence and sport.

It says there is no evidence that boys do better at single-sex schools, or that having more male teachers as role models makes any difference to boys' behaviour or achievement.

Those differences tend to be smaller than those between children from different ethnic groups or social classes, the PPTA says. Boys from well-off homes continue to do very well at school, but for most, the expectations and performance that once ensured their supremacy in the classroom have not shifted.

"Males live in a warrior world; they are the main perpetrators of violence in all forms, are drawn to violent and risky pastimes, and live in a world that values warriors whether on the sporting field or in business.

"These were once considered highly desirable attributes when social capital was based around physical prowess on the battlefields or in hard manual labour. Today, economic success is largely based on intellectual capital with the exception, probably, of professional sportsmen.

"Boys' socialisation and experience continues to prepare them for a world that does not exist any more."

What is needed now, says the PPTA, is for society to offer boys a wider view of what it means to be masculine, and this won't be achieved by simply having more male teachers in schools or more active learning.

"While society continues to value sport over academic pursuits and to privilege sportspeople accordingly, and while parents continue to think it is more important that boys should be out playing sport than doing their homework, nothing will change," it says.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, says Robert Sturch, principal of Hastings Boys' High School.

There is not a shred of doubt, he says, that NCEA has disadvantaged boys, and for the PPTA to suggest otherwise is not only completely and utterly wrong, but downright unethical.

He also takes issue with the assertion there is no evidence that single-sex schools are better for boys, and that it does not matter how many male teachers they have.

NCEA gives points for creative, open-ended, "reflective" thinking, organisation and presentation. That's good for girls, but it's not how boys learn, think or use what they have learned, Mr Sturch says.

Boys like clear rules, boundaries, structure and organisation. They like an orderly, clinical approach to learning. They're not always as organised as they could be, and they tend not to see it as important to add finer details, such as neat borders to their homework.

No one would want to go back to "appalling" end-of-year exams as the sole point of assessment for a year's work, but NCEA definitely needs to be made more gender-neutral, Mr Sturch says.

"It needs to recognise the difference in learning styles of boys, where and how boys learn, and match assessment to what suits both genders. At the moment it favours girls.

"There's no easy answer A lot of clever people have worked on this, but there has to be a way of fair assessment for boys that remains fair for girls. They could look at schools where boys are doing well, and look at what they're being taught, and how."

Contrary to the PPTA's assertion, boys' schools are playing a key role in maintaining boys' standards of achievement, Mr Sturch says.

"People might think they are places of rough and tumble and not a lot of learning or stimulation, but they are places where boys can be masculine, creative and sensitive at the same time.

"They are a fun place to be. They are where boys become educated young men, where it's fine to be masculine, and where they're not looked down on because their projects don't have a border around them."

Literacy is a key weakness with boys, Mr Sturch says. Less inclined than girls to sit down with a good book, they approach NCEA less well-equipped for the degree of literacy now needed even for subjects such as maths.

Hastings Boys is tackling this with carrot and stick, spending $20,000 a year on library books to appeal to boys, and whole-school compulsory reading for 15 minutes every day after lunch. Some boys have to be coaxed with magazines before graduating on to books of their choice.

As for the comparison with co-ed schools, there's no arguing with the statistics, which show boys are doing better at boys' schools, with their higher ratio of male teachers, and everything geared to boys, he says.

He points to his own school, "the top-performing decile-two school in the country".

Hastings Boys' had a 69.9 percent achievement rate in last year's Level 1 NCEA. That compares with a mean of 40.5 percent among decile one-three schools, 62.3 percent among boys' schools, 51.8 percent among co-ed schools, and the national mean of 57 percent.

On a regional basis, and with varying decile ratings, the figures show St John's College on 67.5 percent, Napier Boys' on 72 percent, Karamu High on 59.4 percent, and Havelock High on 70.7 percent. for Level 1.

There are 66 boys' schools in New Zealand, attended by about 25 percent of the nation's teenage boys.

Dr Paul Baker, rector of Waitaki Boys' High School, told a conference on boys education recently that 2002 and 2005 NCEA results for boys' schools, after allowing for decile ratings, showed boys in them were 9 percent ahead of boys in co-ed education.

Critics claim the difference in results can be attributed to the types of boys attending boys-only schools, but that argument does not stand up when such schools are the only option in town and still outperform co-ed boys and girls schools of the same decile, Dr Baker says.

Mr Sturch says the results for Hastings Boys do not come from any socio-economic or ethnic advantage. The composition of his school's roll reflects the make-up of Hastings across the board.

He defends the amount of sport on offer, saying its benefits go way beyond plain physical activity or reinforcing a macho identity. The top-achieving schools nationwide are heavily into sport, because it provides an avenue for learning and success, a way to keep some boys interested in school.

The campaign "Girls Can Do Anything", launched several decades ago to lift the mediocre academic performance of girls, help them break free of societal and cultural restraints, and increase their life choices, appears to have been more successful than anyone anticipated, Mr Sturch says.

But he can't help wondering whether a "Boys Can Do Anything" programme in its place would now have girls feeling they had been disadvantaged.

"There might have been a bit of an outcry," he says.

Dr Baker was a member of the reference group set up two years ago by the Government, to investigate boys' education. He warns that boys are definitely getting a raw deal in terms of NCEA assessment, and that it's time for a halt to institutionalised "deny, delay, trivialisation".

Technology and physical education are prime examples of what's going wrong, he says. Boys can do the practical of both these subjects, but often fail the standard because they can't write about what they have done as well as girls.

"In phys-ed, girls excel in health and physiology, boys at the physical; in technology, girls excel in design, boys in creation.

That has led to gaps of up to 40 percent between boys' and girls' achievements in some standards, leaving boys disillusioned by subjects they most wanted to do, Dr Baker says.

The gap in results spans all subjects, but is worst in languages, English, arts and technology. At Level 1, the gender gap is 10-12 percent in favour of girls, which means that for every six girls who pass, only five boys did.

The gap is growing at levels 2 and 3, although the fact that boys tend to start leaving school sooner than girls complicates the statistics. Last year, boys accounted for 48 percent of the Year 12 roll but only 44 percent of the Level 2 passes.

They made up 47 percent of the Year 13 roll and just 41 percent of passes.

At excellence level, the gap was wider again. Girls gained 75 percent more excellence grades at Level 1, 57 percent more at Level 2, and 50 percent more outstanding scholarships. Dr Baker said if there were any connection between teacher-gender and the success rate of boys, it would be complex and subtle.

Various studies had found that male teachers were more likely to motivate boys, cater for their interests, and provide stable role models for boys who lacked that at home. For many boys today, only mothers and female teachers were involved in their education.

"The danger is of a subliminal equation of education with femininity," he said.

However, the question of the best teachers for boys came down to individual teachers, whether male or female, "who by instinct or hard graft come to understand boys and connect with maleness. Teachers who consider robust, collective masculinity as a force to be celebrated and positively channelled rather than a threat to be controlled.

"We need less of Teacher A - A for appropriate because that's the sort of word this teacher uses all the time. Are you behaving appropriately, John? Was that an appropriate word to use Stevie? Do we need to conference on that? Do you want to negotiate with me Wero?

"I've seen too many teachers As," Dr Baker told his conference audience.

"For boys, Teacher A can be deadly."

On top of these issues, the politics of feminism and education do little to pinpoint the cause of shortcomings in boys' performance in the classroom.

Dr Baker says primary teaching and teachers colleges are already seen as female environments, and discussion about male teacher numbers in primary school has created feminist resentment "that the inadequacies of some fathers have caused male primary teachers to be valued over female primary teachers. One researcher has even declared that calls for more male teachers are 'misogynist discourses that undervalue women teachers'," he said.

Against such a complex background, it seems unlikely there will be agreement anytime soon about the reasons for boys' exam results. But one point of the debate is clear. Results speak for themselves, for better or worse. And what is shown to work is surely what works? Or is that too simple?