Also, Sharpe’s surveys of young working class women in London in 1994 found that they no longer prioritised love, marriage, husbands and children as they did in 1976. Her survey concluded that jobs, careers and financial independence were their main goals. As such there is an incentive for females to succeed at school.
The women’s movement and feminism have achieved considerable success in improving the rights and raising the expectations and self-esteem of women. Women are more likely to aspire to careers that require high levels of qualifications, and are therefore motivated to succeed in education.
Changes to the curriculum also affected the gender gap. After National Curriculum 1998 (Revolution of Education) was introduced, Boys and girls studied the same subjects and same course. This gave an equal opportunity/access to both genders. GCSE was introduced which involves coursework. Girls are particularly good at this due to literacy skills, time management and organisation. However, subject choice still remains largely gender stereotyped. Kelly (1987) points out that science is packaged in very masculine ways in both school and wider culture in general. This leads to boys seeing the environments in which the ‘hard’ sciences are taught as male spaces, which they dominate. Colley (1998) found that gender stereotyping still remains significant in further and higher education because of cultural beliefs about femininity and masculinity, family pressure and peer pressure. She notes that in single sex schools girls are twice as likely to study mathematics at university.
Also most girls are well behaved than boys. They read more than boys and can concentrate longer than boys. Girls at GCSE age are more mature and more able to see the longer-term consequences of hard work than boys, who respond better to having short-term goals.
There are also many reasons to why boys are under achieving. Mitsos and Browne (1998) believe that boys are under-achieving in education, although they also believe girls are disadvantaged. The evidence of boys' under-achievement, according to Mitsos and Browne, is that, girls do better than boys in every stage of National Curriculum SAT (Standard Assessment Tests) results in English, maths and science, and they are now more successful than boys at every level in CCSE, outperforming boys in every major subject except physics.
Atkinson and Wilson’s (2003) research shows that the gap between boys’ and girls’ achievement at school grows between 7 and 16. Their study of 500,000 children shows that despite boys outperforming girls in maths and science in early schooling, by the age of 16 girls were achieving higher results in both subjects than boys.
Mitsos and Browne point out that girls are more likely to stay on further education after 16 but they are not as successful as they are at GCSE level. They girls are still under represented in science and engineering subjects and they do less well in A levels than boys with the same GCSE grades. In society as a whole, women are less well qualified than men and women still do less well in paid employment than men with similar qualifícations. Mitsos and Browne then go on to suggest a range of reasons why boys do less well than they could. They believe that teachers may tend to be less strict with boys, giving them more lead way with deadlines and expecting a lower standard of work than they get from girls. This can allow boys to under achieve by failing to push them to achieve their potential. Boys are more likely to disrupt classes and are more likely to be excluded from school.
Also, the culture of masculinity encourages boys to appear macho and tough. They are therefore more likely to develop an anti-education, anti-learning subculture, where school work is seen as ‘uncool’. This is the sort of subculture adopted by the ‘lads’ in Willis’s classic study. Because of this, boys may lack the dedication and perseverance necessary to succeed in coursework.
Some evidence suggests that girls are more likely to spend their leisure time in ways which compliment their education and contribute to educational achievements. Mitsos and Browne place considerable emphasis on reading. Women are more likely to read than men, and mothers are more likely than fathers to read to their children. Girls are therefore more likely to have same sex role models to encourage them to read.
Becky Francis points out that lower expectations of boys have had some effect on preventing boys’ attainment improving as fast as girls. She cites two reasons for girls overtaking boys in achievement,the greater ambition of girls compared to twenty years earlier and the culture of ‘laddish masculinity’ which turns against the idea of working hard for exams. She argues that perhaps boys are becoming increasingly laddish in their efforts to construct themselves as non-feminine, as girls move into areas traditionally seen as masculine.
However, not all boys are doing poorly in their education as Epstein et al (1999) suggests. The statistics may mask the fact that it is some boys (as well as some girls) who fail, especially at secondary level.
Also, Gilborn & Mirza (2000) believes that ethnicity and class are more significant than gender.
Maybe teaching boys and girls in single sex schools would help a lot as Colley suggests but also at the same time, this would cause competition between the two genders and the gender gap will remain. Croxford & Tinklin (2000) suggests that having a boy/girl seating plan in lessons reduces male disruptions as they are motivated by seeing the amount of work girls do in the lesson. Ofsted inspections also help as the schools that have teachers who cannot teach at good standards will be replaced by someone who can.
There are lots of discussions and solutions that can help boys achieve results as good as girls.