WHEN teachers at Hartismere High School in Suffolk analysed the time logs kept by pupils during their mock GCSE exams, the results fell neatly into two groups. One group of teenagers spent two hours a night revising, the other barely an hour. In the two-hour group were most of the girls. In the other group were almost all the boys.
Across Britain, girls have been overtaking boys at GCSE, subject by subject. The latest figures show that in 1993, for the first time, girls took the lead in the former male strongholds of maths and science. For all subjects, 45 per cent of girls received five or more GCSEs graded between A and C, compared with 37 per cent of boys. The question: 鈥淲hat are we going to do about the boys?鈥� is now exercising the minds of teachers, education researchers and even government ministers. Late last year at the annual meeting of the Girls鈥� Schools Association, education secretary Gillian Shephard warned that although girls鈥� academic advances are a cause for pride, 鈥渢here is a danger of going too far鈥�.
Researchers have sought to explain the academic gender gap with theories of early socialisation, family expectations, and even differences in the womb. But the results of research in Suffolk, like those from Hartismere, have raised a much more straightforward question: do boys need to be made to work harder?
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Suffolk is home to a series of grass-roots projects on the gender gap which builds on the work of David Jesson and his team at the University of Sheffield. They have built up a database of education performance indicators, with details of 30 000 pupils ranging from their social class to the results of various tests taken at different ages. Analysis of these data shows that the best predictor of a 16-year-old鈥檚 GCSE results in any subject is his or her reading score between the ages of 10 and 12.
Suffolk was well placed to exploit this finding because the local education authority holds reading scores for all Suffolk children who take a standardised reading test at age 12. So last year the authority offered its schools the chance to see how they had done with their pupils.
Advisers from Suffolk worked out a points system for GCSE results with higher grades attracting higher numbers of points. They then used the Sheffield data to estimate how many GCSE points pupils should attain, based on their 12+ reading scores. The expected numbers of points for all Suffolk鈥檚 teenagers, right across the ability range, were then plotted as a 鈥渃ounty line鈥� on a graph (see Diagram).
Advisers then took the real reading scores and GCSE results of pupils in each school and plotted them on a graph. Pupils whose GCSE performance came above the school鈥檚 line had done better than expected 鈥� the 鈥渙verachievers鈥� 鈥� while those who came below the line, even if they gained high grades, had done worse than expected 鈥� the 鈥渦nderachievers鈥�.
Every pupil鈥檚 results appear as a separate mark on the scatter chart. With the data divided by gender, many schools could see not only that far more boys than girls were underachievers, but could also pick out who those boys were and start thinking about why they were underachieving.
One school to do this was Copleston High School in Ipswich. Its GCSE results, shown in national league tables, are above average and rising. In 1993, 46 per cent of its pupils gained five or more GCSEs graded between A and C. In 1994, the figure reached 48 per cent. A closer look, however, shows that in 1993, 39 per cent of Copleston boys gained five or more grades A to C, compared with 55 per cent of girls.
In 1994, the gap widened to 38 per cent of boys and 59 per cent of girls.
As a first stage in the school鈥檚 investigation, deputy head Peter Freeman pored over the school鈥檚 scatter chart and picked out pupils who had under or overachieved by at least one grade in every subject. More than two-thirds of the underachieving group were boys 鈥� 26 out of 34 pupils. Among the overachievers, 22 out of 35 were girls.
He and other senior staff at Copleston went down the list of underachievers looking for explanations. They found that a number of popular theories did not stand up to scrutiny. There was no link with ability, for example. Bright boys under-achieved just as much as those with below average ability. There was no link with literacy, indeed, the 12+ reading scores of boys and girls in the Copleston group were almost identical, seriously undermining the theory that boys鈥� poor performance at 16 is born of earlier literacy problems.
Factors that did crop up repeatedly were in more obvious, social categories: under-achievers had a pattern of poor attendance, misbehaviour, and summer birthdays 鈥� a known factor in under-achievement. Leaving out the birthdays, says Freeman, a picture emerged of a group of boys 鈥済enerating an ethos of not working hard at school, going out in the evenings, rather than staying in to do homework鈥�.
In the next stage, staff at Copleston tried to identify pupils with a similar risk of underachievement in time to intervene. Last autumn, Freeman circulated to teachers the 12+ reading scores of all pupils due to take GCSEs in 1995, and asked them to pick out those who were in danger of falling well below their predicted GCSE grades. Staff came back with the names of 36 boys and 15 girls. Each of these pupils has been invited to work once a week with a teacher 鈥渕entor鈥� on study skills and exam preparation. Whether that will be enough will not be known until next summer鈥檚 results are out.
Below the line
Apart from anything else however, the experiment revealed the difficulty schools have in getting across notions of over and underachievement. When parents of the 鈥渂elow the line鈥� group were asked to give permission for the mentoring scheme, several refused because they thought their children were being labelled 鈥渢hick鈥�.
Similar misunderstandings appear to be common in national discussions about the gender gap. It is alleged, for example, that boys are doing consistently worse than girls. But they are not. Many boys are overachievers, and nationally in 1993, the performance between boys and girls was 1 per cent in maths and science, 17 per cent in English. When GCSEs could be gained mainly through coursework, received wisdom said that girls鈥� supposed steadiness and neatness would place them in a more favourable position than boys. But analysis of the Sheffield database shows that in 1994, when coursework marks were sharply cut back in favour of final exams, there was no impact on the gender gap.
Back in Suffolk, alongside the scatter chart project, a county inspector named Joe Connolly has been talking to schoolboys, examining their work and conducting studies to find out why some underperform. The emerging picture mirrors the Hartismere homework pattern. Both boys and girls sometimes left their work unfinished, but girls were much more likely to obey instructions from a teacher to finish it. Able boys also appeared less organised than their female counterparts: able girls were more likely to carry a pen, pencil sharpener, or ruler.
In schools where boys performed as well or better than girls 鈥� and in a quarter of Suffolk schools boys鈥� GCSE results are better than girls鈥� 鈥� Connolly found that the ethos of being individual, hard-working and organised, was well-established by the time pupils reached their teens. But in schools where boys were disorganised and indifferent there was no great bravado about not achieving. 鈥淏oys were saying 鈥業 really wish I could do this but I can鈥檛鈥�,鈥� says Connolly. 鈥淚t seems to be an important step to realise that boys need more checking up on, they need more supervision to make sure they are organised. The schools where the boys do as well as the girls seem to enable boys to be pupils rather than having to be boys.鈥�
As at Copleston school, teachers at Hartismere have tried to intervene to encourage boys to works harder, but early results are patchy. Last year, Hartismere鈥檚 deputy head Sue Hargadon used GCSE grades projected from mock exams to identify pupils at risk of underperforming in the real exams. She also picked out those identified as not working hard in their GCSE year. They were offered help with studying and their parents invited to talk to teachers. Most were boys. Some did improve on their estimated grades but others, in particular the lower ability boys, did not. Hargadon feels that more extensive intervention is needed earlier on.
Support for this and other of the Suffolk findings are implied by the preliminary findings of a current study, directed by Jean Rudduck, professor of education at Homerton College, Cambridge. Her interviews with teenage boys in former mining communities also suggest that social factors along with poor organisational skills and understanding of hardwork are more influential than literacy or language development in contributing to the gender gap.
What is hard work?
Teenagers, for example, see Dad coming home having finished work for the day, while Mum returns from her job and continues to work at home, she says. In one project, when Rudduck鈥檚 team asked boys if they knew what working hard meant, they replied: 鈥淚t means you get your head down,鈥� but could not be more specific. 鈥淚t鈥檚 quite hard getting them to work out that it means more time, more concentration, more revision,鈥� says Rudduck. 鈥淥ur interviews suggest there is a group of lost boys, and perhaps there has always been a group of lost boys, who want to work and don鈥檛 know how to do it.鈥�
For those boys in particular, Rudduck suggests, the past decade鈥檚 emphasis on equal opportunities for girls in science and technology may have been damaging without an equivalent emphasis on equal opportunities for boys in subjects like English. 鈥淭here are some schools where boys may have shrugged their shoulders and given up,鈥� she says.
This raises once again the thorny question of what is to be done about the boys. At a recent meeting of Suffolk head teachers, advisers asked for ideas in schools that have improved the performance of boys. A middle school head reported that one of his teachers had observed that, in the name of equal opportunities, the school had systematically weeded out all reading books that might be classified as macho.
So the teacher went out and bought books which were full of adventures and violence 鈥� similar material to that in the boys鈥� favourite computer games. The boys, previously less than enthusiastic about reading, began to work harder. At the next set of tests, their reading scores had caught up with the girls鈥�.