ABSTRACT
This chapter will consider some of the ways in which participation and achievement in 14+ education and training are linked to gender. As the title suggests, it will consider the performance of both males and females in order to explore more fully the worries about boys’ underachievement that have surfaced in recent years. The links between gender and performance have been the subject of much discussion since the early 1970s which marked the beginning of a growing realization that girls’ and women’s participation and success in education and training was being adversely affected by gender discrimination. However, in recent years the public debate about gender has shifted to the problem of boys’ underachievement. Numerous newspaper articles and TV programmes have raised the issue – often using inflammatory titles such as The Future is Female (BBC, 1994), Men Aren’t Working (BBC, 1995), Perils of Ignoring our Lost Boys (TES, 28 June 1996), Learning Gender Gap Reveals Redundant Male (The Observer’, 4 January 1998) and Girls really are better than boys (The Observer, 4 January 1998). As we shall see there has indeed been some change in the comparative performance of girls and boys in certain areas. However, further investigation shows that, while gender does have a significant effect on patterns of participation and success, the situation is considerably more complex than it might at first appear. The public debate has tended to equate girls’ success with boys’ failure and while this oversimplification of the issue may be effective for selling newspapers it is not helpful for those trying to find lasting solutions to serious problems. Although there have been significant improvements in girls’ attainment in some areas, there are a number of areas where there is little or no change in the comparative performance of males and females. Also, although gender is important, social class remains the main predictor of educational success, a fact which appears to have been conveniently overlooked in the recent debate about boys’ underachievement. Therefore, in order to explore the reasons for differences in participation and attainment we need to consider the ways in which class and gender intersect to influence educational success or failure.
