Single-sex classes could boost the boys
28 Apr 2008
‘The other possibility is that there is some link between the sex of the teacher and how they focus their teaching.’
Research from Bristol University, which has used data from every state school in England, has found that boys perform ‘significantly’ better in English tests if they are taught in classes with fewer girls.
In instances where the proportion of girls was much higher, the results achieved by their male classmates fell.
Steven Proud, who carried out the research, comments: ‘There is some thought that it could be down to boys free-riding in English classes. The more girls there are, the less they need to work. The other possibility is that there is some link between the sex of the teacher and how they focus their teaching.’
Single-sex classes could help boys to improve their English results.
In his paper, Proud said that the results implied ‘that boys would benefit at all ages from being taught English in schools with as small a proportion of girls as possible.’
Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that boys who were a minority in class could ‘feel swamped by the high-attaining girls’.
‘English is seen as a girly thing to do but that is wrong,’ he said. ‘What schools have to do is look at the subject matter in English and if it appears to have a feminine bias, then they need to look at that and see how it can be changed.’
