Boys Underperforming In Education

11. Why are Boys Under performing in Education?

The objectives of this study are to understand …...

Why boys have been underperforming in education over the past few years? Analyze factors (including economic, societal, and cultural) that are causing the Trend of poor performance and low survival rates at higher levels of education; and Describe current policies and interventions in place to address the issue. Methods National research teams in each of the four countries first explored the underlying dynamics behind boys’ underperformance, while reviewing good practices and providing recommendations in the form of country case studies. A broader gender analysis was then undertaken utilizing the information provided in the case studies, government

Researcher used (Archival Data Set) a data set obtained from Ontario’s Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) in the analyses. EQAO, an independent agency of the Government of Ontario, has a mandate to evaluate and on the quality of education in Ontario schools. EQAO develops and administers several province‐wide tests (mathematics, reading and writing) at the primary, middle, and secondary school level. These tests are designed to measure student achievement against curriculum expectations. Results of these tests yield individual, school, school board, and provincial data on student achievement that help guide improvement planning. A student questionnaire was also included. Follow up t‐tests were conducted and descriptive statistics were used to determine for which outcome variables the groups differed. Cohen’s d was used to report effect sizes. Results from the MANOVA indicated that gender accounted for less than 1 per cent of the reading achievement (η2 = .006). Follow‐up between‐subjects effects for gender showed girls’ average performance to be superior for all nine outcome variables (Table 1, Column 1). Girls were found to significantly outperform males (p < .005) for six outcome variables. Findings from a number of recent reports from large‐scale assessments of reading achievement have reported that on average girls surpass boys in their reading

Over the past decade, USAID—as well as many other organizations and initiatives—has invested a significant amount of resources in measuring reading achievement in the early grades. The challenge, however, as pointed out in this report, is that much of what lies behind boys ‘underachievement comes from factors outside of the school environment—namely, social constructions of the masculine identity and behavioral expectations that are not aligned with the structure and content of typical school systems. School-life expectancy (SLE) data at the global level suggest that the trend of boys’ underachievement is still present more than 20 years after the first calls for attention to the subject and SLE is useful indicator in this research Longitudinal research in the United States using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 (ECLS-K), found that although boys and girls had similar performance in kindergarten, girls’ advantage in reading became apparent by third grade and gender differences continued to increase through eighth grade. Boys’ underachievement in reading is a real issue, but the gap between girls’ and boys’ ‘achievement is not reason for panic, as some researchers have implied. In general, boys tend to perform worse than girls in reading and other language arts in some parts of the world, while the opposite is true in some other parts.