The UK has a problem with boys. If you were born male today, you are increasingly likely to face difficulties at school, work and home.
The gender gap is not new: girls have been outperforming boys at GCSE level for more than three decades. now, while the number of women earning degrees has surpassed that of men since the 1990s.
But tackling boys' underachievement has never been more important. Economic growth is slowing, productivity is falling, and government finances are creaking under the pressure of rising welfare bills.
At a time when businesses are struggling with hiring, more and more men are leaving the workforce. Every member of society must realize his or her maximum potential if we are to solve our economic problems.
There is also a political dimension — William Hague raised the alarm earlier this month about the growing number of disaffected young people who have little to offer. offered or promised in life, they turned to far-right politics.
There is nothing innate about boys' underachievement. There is no fundamental reason why results should deteriorate.
However, without a concerted effort to close the achievement gap, it looks set to widen. More and more men and boys find themselves unwittingly consigned to the scrap heap of life.
The problem is clear — where are the solutions?
The widening development gap
Before children even set foot in the classroom, boys are already falling behind.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) notes that by age three, there are “significant gender gaps in both cognitive and social-emotional development.”
By the time children reach primary school, two thirds of girls have achieved a «good level of development», suggesting they are able to write a simple sentence or count beyond 20.
Just under two thirds of girls have achieved the same milestone. For children eligible for free school meals, the inequality is even greater.
This gap, which opens at three children, never fully closes, according to an analysis of Department for Education data by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
“A quiet crisis is brewing among boys and men in our classrooms, workplaces and communities,” says Richard Reeves, academic and author of About Boys and Men,” which examines men's ills from cradle to career.
“ Boys are now falling behind girls, and men are falling behind women, at almost every level of education. This is true of almost every rich economy.»
Reeves, a former adviser to Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister, says biology is partly behind this.
All the scientific evidence suggests that the prefrontal cortex — or, in Reeves' words, «the part of the brain which helps you pull yourself together»—develops about a year or two faster in girls than in boys.
Girls “They're not smarter, they just mature faster,” Reeves says. «Anyone who spends time with teenagers knows exactly what I'm talking about.»
He concluded that there are simply some «natural advantages of women and girls in the education system.»
Instead of recognizing this and compensating for it, the system has actually evolved to favor girls. The move to more coursework at GCSE level has benefited girls more than boys, according to the IFS, which noted that the achievement gap first emerged in the 1980s when exam-based O levels were replaced by GCSEs in England. Wales and Northern Ireland. /p>
“The shake-up has led to a move towards more continuous assessment, which appears to have benefited girls,” says a recent IFS paper.
The idea is “quite difficult to convey because many people they say, well, if girls and women have always had this natural advantage, why didn’t we see it 40 years ago?” says Reeves. “The answer is sexism.
“There is no doubt that my mother would have gone to university if she had been born 50 years later, but this was not considered anything special. But now that the lid has been lifted, the potential for women in education continues to grow. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that many more men fall behind along the way.”
The Troubles of the White Working Class
Of course, it would be wrong to assume that women are more successful than men in the world of work. The average gender pay gap of 7.7% continues to show that women are undervalued.
After graduation, men are more likely to be in «highly skilled» jobs than women, and the average male graduate's earnings are approx. 9% higher. than women a year after graduating from university, according to the IFS.
Ten years later, this gap will have grown to 31%.
However, the worry for scientists, policymakers and teachers is that educational attainment appears to be falling for men and boys, while it is improving for women.
Average men's inflation-adjusted wages have fallen by 6, according to the ONS. .9% since 2008. Among women, this figure increased by 2.2%. In fact, men's wages are no higher in real terms today than they were in 2002.
Men's average hours worked have fallen since the pandemic, while women are working more.
Louise Murphy of the Resolution Foundation says the worsening prospects for boys and men reflect structural factors.
“The UK's industrial structure has changed. Some of the industrial jobs that existed no longer exist.»
Reeves says: “It used to be true that men with relatively modest levels of education did well in the job market. And that's no longer always the case.»
Boys' experiences in schools have meant they are «lagging behind in the labor market» more broadly, he adds.
Achievement has become a particular issue among one group of boys: the white working class. < /p>
“Too many people in society see these boys as just people on mopeds with balaclavas on their heads,” says Andy Eadie, assistant headteacher at Cardinal Langley School in Rochdale. “In reality it is only a small minority.”
Since 2016, Eadie has taught in a mixed secondary school with 1,200 students. A fifth of its pupils are eligible for free school meals.
Many have already been “written off” by teachers as soon as they enter the classroom. , says Eady, especially if they are white, working-class boys.
“There is a perception that some boys have already signed the contract and there is no hope for them,” he says.
“The danger is that people don't care about these gaps. They're just worried about keeping them quiet so they can do other things.»
According to research published by the House of Commons Library, only 14.6% of white working-class boys achieved higher education in 2021 . This is the lowest of any ethnic or socio-economic group and a third of the overall average.
Eadie says: “Many young people from white working class backgrounds actually have very low self-esteem.
p>“So you have a lot of young people who are potentially underperforming and not doing very well.”
There are signs that this malaise is worsening Britain's unemployment crisis. In the three months to January, one in three young people aged 18 to 24 were classified as economically inactive (meaning they are not working or looking for work). This is a record high figure.
The rate has risen more than five percentage points since the end of 2019, before the pandemic. The inactivity rate among men aged 50 to 64 rose five times slower over the same period.
The inactivity rate among young men has roughly doubled since the early 1990s, and nearly two million are now out of work .
Some choose to continue their education, but a percentage of men who do not work do not study. or training (NEET) is again approaching the financial crisis level of 15.3%. As for women, this path remains bumpy, but downward.
“I think it goes back to the idea that we just don’t expect our boys to succeed. So they're not doing very well,” says Conservative MP Nick Fletcher, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Men and Boys.
Caroline Barlow, principal of Heathfield Community College, presented evidence to the APPG which suggested there was a culture of low expectations from male students.
“In the early days there was a tendency to almost just be grateful if boys were around and they did what «job,» she said.
By changing teachers' expectations of their students, results improved and Heathfield was also able to close the gender gap.
Fletcher says: “We expect our boys to behave badly, so they behave badly. We're letting our guys down, and unless we really recognize that we have a problem, we won't start looking for a solution.”
Where does the problem start? Some people think it's at home.
Family circumstances have changed dramatically over the past few decades, with the number of single-parent households rising sharply as divorces become more common or people don't marry at all. The vast majority of children in such conditions grow up with their mothers.
In part, this reflects women's economic opportunities: they can afford to be single parents.
However, it raises the question of where male role models come from. The study, co-led by the Fatherhood Institute, found that fathers who read to their children every day boost their development and can help close achievement gaps in early years.
Conservative government leader Lord Willetts writes in his book The Pinch: «The Social Security system, which was originally designed to compensate men for lost earnings, is being slowly and haphazardly restructured to compensate women for the loss of men.»
It can also leave men rudderless in midlife.< /p >
As Reeves writes in his book: “Economically independent women can now prosper, whether they are wives or not. Men who don't have a wife, on the other hand, often behave in disarray. Compared to married men, they have poorer health, lower employment rates, and weaker social networks.”
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