boys internal underachieve

• Primary school teachers


  • Lack of role models for boys due to not having any male teachers
• Secondary schools


  • Divide in what teachers teach for examle men teaching more male subjects
• Laddish/anti school subcultures

  If boys see that education isn't for them they might form an anti-school subculture and decide to play class clown or truant lessons, may not see homework as important
• Teachers labelling boys as underachievers

  Can lead to self-fulfilling prophecy
• Peer pressure

  To not be seen as hardworkers
• Feminisation of education

  • Introduction of coursework plays towards girls' strengths and they outperform
  • Female teachers see strategies which are lent towards female attributes, for example not having competition
• Sewell's claims


  • Education is feminised
  • Schools don't nurture masculine traits
  • Coursework is a major cause of gender differences in achievement
• 14% of primary school teachers are male
• 39% of 8-11 year olds have no lessons with male teachers
• Claims that the culture of primary school is becoming feminised


  Only male teachers can exert the firm discipline that boys need to achieve
• ⅔ of 7-8 year olds believe gender of teachers don't matter
• Disciplinarian discourse


  Teachers' authority is made explicit and visible, for example through shouting
• Liberal discourse


  Teacher authority is implicit and invisible, child-centred discourse involves pseudo-adultification where the teacher speaks to the pupil as if they were an adult
• Moral panic about boys


  Critics of feminism argue that policies to promote girls in education are no longer needed, and that girls have succeeded at the expense of boys who are disadvantaged
• Moral panic has contributed to a shift in education policy, with the negative effects ignored and the problem narrowed down solely to the issue of achievement gaps, ignoring other problems faced by girls in school including sexual harassment
• Underachieving boys had led to neglect of girls