Outline some factors which explain why boys are making slow progress in the education system
Outline some factors which explain why boys are making slow progress in the education system (12 marks)
There are many reasons why boys are making slow progress in the education system, statistics show that girl outperform boys at GCSE, in 2006 9.6% more girls than boys obtained 5+ more A*-C grades. There are many reasons for boys not doing as well in the education system, it’s split into two categories: inside school factors, and outside school factors.
An outside school factor includes the changes in the job market which are no longer suited to boys, so they have no motivation to achieve and get a good job. Mac an Ghaill suggests that working class boys are experiencing a ‘crisis of masculinity’ as they are socialised into thinking that they have to be the breadwinner. However, there’s a decline in the manufacturing industry, so there are more desk-based jobs and these are (generally) more suited to females, which means that females may become the breadwinner role. All of this means that boys could feel that qualifications are a waste of time because of the limitations in the job market so will lack motivation. A criticism could be that not all boys feel this way and some do have motivation to achieve high grades in the education system and functionalists would argue that there are jobs which are more suited to boys, for example, fireman.
An inside school factor is ‘laddish’ behaviour, and their status among their peers. Anti-school subcultures are developed mostly over working class boys – especially by the ones who are put into lower sets or streams. Hargreaves and Willis suggest boys are fatalistic in accepting their academic failure as inevitable, so they develop coping strategies, by trying to get credibility from their peers. They do this by disrupting lessons and making it look like they don’t care about their education. However, Carolyn Jackson identifies the motivations for laddish behaviour as being both social failure, and academic failure, and
There are many reasons why boys are making slow progress in the education system, statistics show that girl outperform boys at GCSE, in 2006 9.6% more girls than boys obtained 5+ more A*-C grades. There are many reasons for boys not doing as well in the education system, it’s split into two categories: inside school factors, and outside school factors.
An outside school factor includes the changes in the job market which are no longer suited to boys, so they have no motivation to achieve and get a good job. Mac an Ghaill suggests that working class boys are experiencing a ‘crisis of masculinity’ as they are socialised into thinking that they have to be the breadwinner. However, there’s a decline in the manufacturing industry, so there are more desk-based jobs and these are (generally) more suited to females, which means that females may become the breadwinner role. All of this means that boys could feel that qualifications are a waste of time because of the limitations in the job market so will lack motivation. A criticism could be that not all boys feel this way and some do have motivation to achieve high grades in the education system and functionalists would argue that there are jobs which are more suited to boys, for example, fireman.
An inside school factor is ‘laddish’ behaviour, and their status among their peers. Anti-school subcultures are developed mostly over working class boys – especially by the ones who are put into lower sets or streams. Hargreaves and Willis suggest boys are fatalistic in accepting their academic failure as inevitable, so they develop coping strategies, by trying to get credibility from their peers. They do this by disrupting lessons and making it look like they don’t care about their education. However, Carolyn Jackson identifies the motivations for laddish behaviour as being both social failure, and academic failure, and