ABSTRACT
The general assumption underpinning mainstream education commentary in Britain is that as young women are outperforming boys at GCSE and A-level exams,1 and increasingly at undergraduate level too, they are clearly no longer a concern and we should redirect our attention and resources to meeting boys/young men’s needs.2 Indeed, this has been the actual case in the British compulsory sector for some time, with targets and resources allocated by the Department for Education and Skills aimed at improving male achievement. The jettisoning of attention to issues concerning girls and women in education has been particularly justified by the ‘poor boys’ discourse that is hegemonic in contemporary debates on gender and achievement (Epstein et al. 1998). This discourse positions boys as victims of the ‘feminisation’ of schooling, blaming female teachers and a ‘feminised schooling environment’ for the ‘gender gap’, in spite of a complete lack of evidence – and indeed the existence of a raft of contradictory evidence – to support this case (see Francis and Skelton 2005, for discussion). Given that in Britain women are now outnumbering men in Further and Higher education (David and Woodward 1998; TES 2005), it is unsurprising that such arguments are increasingly being applied to the post-16 sector too (Quinn 2003). The task of highlighting continuing inequalities that disadvantage girls and women is therefore particularly imperative.
