Examine the reasons for changes in the educational attainment of males

Examine the reasons for changes in the educational attainment of males and females in recent years (20 marks) For the past recent years girls have significantly outperformed boys in educational attainment and this is due to a number of factors. The GCSE results for 2000 and 2001 shows the degree to which the percentage of girls achieving grades A*-C exceeded that of boys. In 2002, 62.4% of female GCSE entrants achieved grades A*-C, compared with 53.4% of males. Research published in 2003 shows that the gap between girls and boys widens as they grow older. The most recent barrier which is being broken down is that of university entry. The most recent official figures for a gender breakdown in university admission are from 2001. These show that while 43% of all young people entered higher education, the figure for girls was 46.7% and for boys 40.4% Joan Gannod drew a number of conclusions as to why this was. One reason is for the ‘lad culture’ that resides in numerous schools. The attitude that school is â€Å"uncool†, an anti-social culture working against learning. Keith Shipman and Keith Hicks identified that the presence of friends in a group make you work less. That boys saw looking cool as being more important than being studious. Also, Paul Willis identified that working class boys were much susceptible to this as it was the middle class values that were prized in the classroom via the hidden curriculum which influenced the boys into working against the education system. Another theorist, Peter Woods In The Divided School (1979) argued that boys are more concerned with the approval of their peer group than the approval of their teachers. Another further reason is the lack of role models for boys, p... ...he number of girls expressing professional career hopes such as doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc. Sharpe has argued that these changes in attitudes towards marriage and work are factors in explaining why girls are performing better at school than they were twenty years ago. I think that the interactionist perspective for example, Peter Woods is successful in theory, as he believes that it provides information which could lead to better teaching and a reduction in conflict and deviance within schools however this Marxist approach has its limitations and its main focus is from a macro perspective and does not appear to focus on each individual. The relative uniformity of meanings that lie behind what counts as knowledge and ability, suggests that such meanings are not simply constructed in the classroom but rather they have a wider and fundamental basis.