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Until the 1960s boys spent longer and went further in school than girls, and were more likely to graduate from university. Now, across the rich world and in a growing number of poor countries, the balance has tilted the other way.
policymakers once fretted about girl's lack of confidence in science but this is changing. Sweden hascommissioned research into its "boy crisis". Australia has devised a reading programme called "Boys, blocks, Books and Bytes". In just a couple of generations, one gender gap has closed, only for another to open up.
The reversal is laid out in a report published on March 5th by the OECD, a Paris-based rich-country think-tank. Boys dominance just about endures inmaths; at age 15 they are, on average, the equivalent of three months schoolings ahead of girls. In science the results are fairly even. But in reading, where girls have been ahead for sometime, a gulf has appeared. In all G4 countries and economies in the study, girls outperform boys. The average gap is equivalent to an extra year of schooling. The OECD deems literacy to be the most important skill that itassesses, since further learning depends on it. Sure enough, teenage boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail to achieve basic proficiency in any of maths, reading and science.
Youngsters in this group, with nothing to build on or shine at, are prone to drop out of school altogether.
To see why boys and girls fare so differently in the classroom, first look at what they do outside it. The average 15-year old girl devotes five and- a-half hours a week to homework, an hour more than the average boy, who spend more time playing video games and trawling the internet. Three-quarters of girls read for pleasure, compared with little more than half of boys. Reading rates are falling everywhere as screens draw eyes from pages, but boys are giving up faster. The OECD found that, among boys who do as much homework as the average girl, the gender gap in reading fell by nearly a quarter.
Once in the classroom, boys long to be out of it. They are twice as likely as girls to report that school is a "waste of time ", often turn up late. Just as a teacher used to struggle to persuade girls that science is not only for men, the OECD now urges parents and policymakers to steer boys away from a version of masculinity that ignores academic achievement. Boys disdain for school might have been less irrational when there were plenty of jobs for uneducated men. But those days have long gone. It may be that a bit of swagger helps in maths, where confidence plays a part in boys lead (though it sometimes extends to delusion : 12% of boys told the OECD that they arefamiliar with the mathematical concept of sub-junctive sealing", a red herring that fooled only 7% of girls.) But their lack of self-discipline drives teachers crazy. The OECD found that boys did much better in its anonymised tests than in teachers assessments. What is behind this discrimination? One possibility is that teachers mark up students who are polite, eager and stay out of flights, all attributes that are more common among girls. In some countries, academic points can even be docked for bad behaviour.
English Language
Directions (1 - 5) : Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions. Certain words/ phrases are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. Until the 1960s boys spent longer and went further in school than girls, and were more likely to graduate from university. Now, across the rich world and in a growing number of poor countries, the balance has tilted the other way.
policymakers once fretted about girl's lack of confidence in science but this is changing. Sweden hascommissioned research into its "boy crisis". Australia has devised a reading programme called "Boys, blocks, Books and Bytes". In just a couple of generations, one gender gap has closed, only for another to open up.
The reversal is laid out in a report published on March 5th by the OECD, a Paris-based rich-country think-tank. Boys dominance just about endures inmaths; at age 15 they are, on average, the equivalent of three months schoolings ahead of girls. In science the results are fairly even. But in reading, where girls have been ahead for sometime, a gulf has appeared. In all G4 countries and economies in the study, girls outperform boys. The average gap is equivalent to an extra year of schooling. The OECD deems literacy to be the most important skill that itassesses, since further learning depends on it. Sure enough, teenage boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail to achieve basic proficiency in any of maths, reading and science.
Youngsters in this group, with nothing to build on or shine at, are prone to drop out of school altogether.
To see why boys and girls fare so differently in the classroom, first look at what they do outside it. The average 15-year old girl devotes five and- a-half hours a week to homework, an hour more than the average boy, who spend more time playing video games and trawling the internet. Three-quarters of girls read for pleasure, compared with little more than half of boys. Reading rates are falling everywhere as screens draw eyes from pages, but boys are giving up faster. The OECD found that, among boys who do as much homework as the average girl, the gender gap in reading fell by nearly a quarter.
Once in the classroom, boys long to be out of it. They are twice as likely as girls to report that school is a "waste of time ", often turn up late. Just as a teacher used to struggle to persuade girls that science is not only for men, the OECD now urges parents and policymakers to steer boys away from a version of masculinity that ignores academic achievement. Boys disdain for school might have been less irrational when there were plenty of jobs for uneducated men. But those days have long gone. It may be that a bit of swagger helps in maths, where confidence plays a part in boys lead (though it sometimes extends to delusion : 12% of boys told the OECD that they arefamiliar with the mathematical concept of sub-junctive sealing", a red herring that fooled only 7% of girls.) But their lack of self-discipline drives teachers crazy. The OECD found that boys did much better in its anonymised tests than in teachers assessments. What is behind this discrimination? One possibility is that teachers mark up students who are polite, eager and stay out of flights, all attributes that are more common among girls. In some countries, academic points can even be docked for bad behaviour.
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