Boys will be boys or will they?

The latest report follows research started in 2009 identifying the outperforming of female students compared to their male counterparts highlighting a problem which on current trends shows no sign of improvement.  This trend manifests itself at all stages of education from infant school through to post graduate study in higher education.  The problem isn’t static but has been getting progressively worse.

For example, in Scotland, the Scottish Funding Council committed in 2016 to reducing the gender gap in undergraduate study from 15.4% to no more than 5% by 2030, with an interim target of 13.6 percentage points for 2019/20. Yet the gap in university enrolments by men and women from Scotland widened after these targets were set.

In 2021, the Scottish Government noted higher education enrolments among young women from Scotland are higher than male enrolments – 58.4% compared to 41.5% in 2019/20. This gap has widened from 14.1% in 2014/15 to 16.9% in 2019/20.  By 2021/22, the gap between male and female Scottish-domiciled full-time first-degree entrants had grown to 20.5%.

Worryingly despite the statistics, Professor John McKendrick of the Scottish Commission for Fair Access stated in face of a Holyrood Committee contrary to the evidence that Scotland’s commitment to fair access was superior to elsewhere in the UK.

That’s the bad news at the higher education end of the spectrum but what about the least well-educated males?  They are likely to find themselves in low paid physically demanding jobs resulting in poorer physical and mental health with higher rates of smoking and alcohol abuse.  The rest will join those branded NEETs those not in education, employment or training.  Many will end up resorting to crime and imprisonment.

The report’s authors identify several causes for this given that boys and girls from the same families and attending the same schools with the same teachers perform so differently.  One of the challenges cited by parents in the report is the branding of boys for their “toxic masculinity” undermining the confidence of whole generations of boys.

The report also highlights the lack of male role models where schools are  dominated by female staff, brought up at home by single mums and encounter other female professionals such as GPs.

This trend was highlighted recently in these pages by Robin MacPherson of Robert Gordons College in Aberdeen who is a strong advocate of HEAL, encouraging more male participation in roles connected to health, education, administration and literacy. (Boys into HEAL, 24 December 2024).

This is the flip side of the STEM coin where steps are being taken to encourage more female participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.  The HEPI report strongly advocates similar steps to be taken to halt the slide in male educational achievement.

It suggests a wide raft of on the ground work that could be done to help tackle this problem in making the school environment more “boy friendly.”  Other grassroots initiatives include ‘Lads Need Dads’, which runs a range of programmes such as a reading mentoring scheme, and the Fatherhood Institute’s FRED (Fathers Reading Every Day) campaign.

In public policy terms it suggests that the House of Commons inquiry into male education participation should be re-started and that the Holyrood Education Committee should extend its investigation into participation into higher education.  The report also advocates changing the terms of reference of bodies monitoring access to include in their assessments data based on gender and the development of a male education strategy comparable to one developed for women’s health.

HEPI states that back in 2009 this problem was given very little attention but now seems to be firmly on the radar.

Boys will be boys: The educational underachievement of boys and young men, Nick Hillman and Mark Brooks with a Foreword by Mary Curnock Cook.