Boys = education failures?

A report by the think tank "Centre for Policy Studies" has recently suggested that the educational system is consigning boys from the poorest white British and black Caribbean backgrounds to a "lifetime of crime, drugs and prison". Among poor white boys, as shown by the take-up of free-school meals - a usual indicator of deprivation, less than half started secondary school with an adequate foundation in English and Maths. (This compares with 72% for all students).

We had accepted that boys are less committed to study than girls, that they prefer sport and computer games, and so on.

The Report suggests other reasons:

1) Some schools continued with a stubborn refusal to adopt teaching with synthetic phonics. (This despite earlier findings that pupils who had been taught by synthetic phonics were likely to be three years ahead in reading and writing!)

2) Many teachers showed an ideological refusal to enforce discipline, and students ran wild. This should not be downplayed. The categories of boys under discussion often suffer from a lack of discipline at home, so the relaxed attitude at school is not the best thing for them.

3) There was a lack of competitive sport, perhaps from a shortage of male teachers to organise it.

OFSTED do not escape criticism, with what the author sees as a preoccupation with healthy eating and citizenship.