* Historically, boys have underachieved. More girls passed the eleven-plus, so the bar was raised for girls so there were equal numbers attending grammar schools.
* Boys continue to be outperformed at the Foundation Stage and have been since that assessment phase began.
* At KS2, boys are slightly ahead in Maths, and a huge gap has begun to appear by this time in English, most notably in writing.
* In SATs at KS3, for the fifteen years that these were taking place, girls had the upper-hand, notably in English.
* By GCSE, girls outperform boys in every subject.
So why does it happen?
"There is no simple, single reason why boys underachieve...neither is there a quick fix."
No two boys are alike, but there is a lot of common ground.
Ideas put forward have been 'laddish' culture.
Inappropriate teaching and learning styles
Boys can throw up smokescreens as it's far better to be seen as being not bothered about winning than to try and fail.
Wilson warns against the dangers of knee jerk reactions.
No two cohorts of boys are exactly the same; different barriers affect different groups.
He advises a whole-school approach:
* Research the precise nature of the problem
* Raise awareness of the issues across the whole school
* Need to create a 'caring masculinity'
pp.36,38,46,62,72,80,82
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