Boys and schooling

Abstract

In many countries, boys have come to public attention because they are gradually slipping behind girls in terms of the educational qualifications they achieve. Two decades ago, it was girls’ educational underperformance which was identified as problematic in many of these countries; currently, however, commentators are concerned that many boys are at risk of social exclusion through poor educational performance. As noted in the Introduction, there is some doubt about the robustness of much of the evidence on which the claims of a growing crisis in boys’ schooling are based. For example, it is clear that some boys (who, in Britain, are particularly those from the working classes and those of African Caribbean, Pakistani and Bengali descent) have for a long time done badly at school, while others (particularly from the middle classes) still have high achievements (Epstein et al., 1998; Mac an Ghaill, 1988; Willis et al., 1977). In addition, girls are not uniformly successful at school.