gender and achievement

• External factors affecting educational achievement

  • Legal reforms
  • Changing expectations
  • Socialisation
• Internal factors affecting educational achievement

  • Hidden curriculum
  • Teacher/ pupil interactions
  • Subculture
• Legal reforms

  • Equal Pay Act 1970 and Sex Discrimination Act 1975 have encouraged women to become more involved in labour market
  • Greater career opportunities have inspired girls to work hard in school
• Changing expectations

  • Women's movement and feminism have achieved considerable success in improving expectations and self-esteem of women
  • Women can look beyond being a housewife and mother as a main role in life
• Socialisation

  • Parents tend to buy girls different toys e.g dolls
  • This encourages language skills
  • This puts girls at an advantage because school is essentially a language experience
  • Most subjects require good levels of comprehension and writing skills
  • Given the increased opportunities in schools, girls have the skills to achieve
• Hidden curriculum

  • before it used to undermine girls
  • boys were more dominant and had higher expectations of performance by teachers
  • There is still progress to be made especially with working class female attainment and encouragement of females in STEM subjects
• Teacher/ pupil interactions

  • More is expected from girls
  • feminsation of education
  • less than one in three teachers are men compared to 69.5 % as female
  • girls are more willing to conform to the school rules
  • boys are expected to be livelier than girls
• Subculture

  • male peer groups devalue school work
  • disruptive behaviour
  • loose classroom time when being sent out
  • school work is seen as girly
  • some develop anti-school subculture where it isnt cool to work hard
  • boys are more likely to be permanently excluded
• Feminism CONCLUSION

  • School promote patriarchal values
  • gendered curriculum that fails to engage working-class girls
  • gendered subject choices leading women into low paid employment
  • Negative labelling of girls meaning insufficient encouragement
  • But with good female exam performance teachers are in a position to bring a self fulfilling prophecy if they label females positively
• Criticism of feminists

  • underestimates the change in the position of females in educational and employment
  • The insufficient encouragement of female pupils may be changing with the feminisation of teaching profession
  • Increasing numbers of female teachers and head teachers act as role models for female pupils
  • Now there if an effort to attract girls in STEM subjects