For secondary data, I will use old newspaper articles, which contain information about GCSE results. I choose these because access is immensely easy and even though newspaper articles can be biased, I am confident the content of the article will be accurate, as they are well known newspapers such as The Mirror and the Times. I will also search the Internet for past GCSE and SAT’s results, as this will give me an immense amount of information about girls ‘and boys’ achievements in the schools across England.
Results
Secondary Results
1999-2000 GCSE Figures
Science SAT’s 2001
Results acquired from http://www.parliament.the-stationery office.co.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmsctech/508/508ap29.htm
I also searched many newspaper articles and I discovered a large amount of information. This is what I found.
“Worried teaching bosses warned that teenage boys will continue to lag behind unless something is done to beat the “anti-learning laddish culture.” Girls are nearly better in nearly every subject, scoring higher grades in even traditinally male-dominated areas.”
Source: The Mirror - Dorothy Lepowska, “The Lads Done Bad”
“Boys were last night told to get their act together because they are dragging down GCSE results. They came under fire as it emerged they are once again losing ground to brighter girls in the exams”
Source: The Sun - Michael Lea, “You’re GCSE Dunces Lads”
“Teenage boys were urged to work harder at school yesterday after Government admitted that the sec gap in GCSE Exams remained worryingly high. Last year boys closed the gap at GCSE level in the first reversal of the trend since the exams were introduced in 1988. But girls have now raised it again by 0.1 percentage points for A* to C grade passes.
Source: The Independent – Sarah Cassidy, “Boys Told to Lift Game after Girls Increase Exams Lead”n
All of these newspaper articles again show the females’ dominance in education.
Primary Results
On next page.
Source: Wai-Sing’s observation, October 2002, Year 11 Sociology Test October 2002
Secondary Data
Many sociologists have revised the academic grades and have attempted to find out exactly why girls achieve higher grades than boys. One of the arguments is “Nature vs. Nurture” The theory of nature is that girls are naturally born more academically capable than boys are. The theory of nurture is that your educational achievements depend on your backgrounds. By this I mean your social class, classmates, subcultures and social contacts. People develop different norms and values depending on their surroundings. Peers will affect one’s educational achievements because of the peer pressure. Some boys will feel the pressure to impress their peers whereas girls may not mind so much. A person’s parents will also play a huge role because they discipline the child and they will almost always treat boys and girls differently. They will usually but boys such toys as guns and cars but they will usually buy dolls and other such toys for girls. Mr. Hannan once stated that when girls play with their dolls they are forming relationships with them and learning how to bond with them. Another experiment from Mr Hannan’s book was he put two little girls in a room and in thirty minutes they will know each other very well and will be playing with each other. If it were boys, they will not even know each other’s names and they would probably have a fight. But girls are born larger than boys are and in six weeks they can tell the difference between a smile and a frown but a six-week old boy cannot tell the different between a human and a balloon. After reading this I find it very difficult to say weather intelligence is from nature or nurture, as it has not actually been proven either way. Even though somebody made the point about six-week old girls having the ability to recognise the difference between a smile and a frown, I honestly do not believe it. This is due to the fact that I cannot fathom a way possible to conduct a fair test to prove this. I believe all children are born with identical mental abilities. They learn from their peers, surroundings and family. Boys and girls are raised differently and the difference in their educational achievements is due to the difference in socialisation.
Analysis of Results
I found the results very interesting. They were not what I predicted. I predicted that girls would answer many more questions then boys. I was wrong because it was actually very well balanced. I agree with the fact that girls mature quicker than boys do because girls’ results are immensely higher than boys’ in primary and secondary education, but the results are very well balanced in higher education such as universities. The difference in socialization between the sexes also plays a big part. Although socialization processes are particularly significant in infancy and childhood, they continue to some degree throughout life. For instance in their teen ages, many boys believe reputation is very important and therefore act very differently. Boys and girls have extremely different norms and values. Boys usually believe it is important to look “cool” and usually jeopardize their education to do so. A huge number of boys are afraid of being labeled as “boffins” or other such names so they do not try so hard in school and achieve much lower grades than girls do. This can also occur in females, but it is less likely.
The fact that females mature quicker has been proved many times through science, but the past results also show us this. During secondary education, the difference in grades between the genders is very high but in university the grades are very well balanced. I again proved this in my observation. My readings show me that the gap between the girls’ and boys’ result are very wide in the SAT’s results but the gap between the grades in the GCSE’s are less wide. This is the case almost every year and it becomes obvious that girls mature much quicker than boys do. Maturity plays a very big part in educational achievements because if a person is immature, they will not take certain subjects such as sex education seriously. Therefore they will not learn certain things in this subject and will not score highly in tests. This agrees with my hypotheses and shows my hypothesis was correct.
I was very surprised with one of my results. In my observation, I noticed there were more girls than boys who were not concentrating. I am certain that this was a very rare result and usually, more girls than boys concentrate in class. I have this opinion because I have been in many classes in my lifetime and almost always, the majority of the people who are concentrating, are females. Obviously, if you concentrate, you will definitely achieve higher grades then a peer who is not concentrating. As the majority of the people who are concentrating are girls, this tells us that most will achieve much higher grades than most boys. I have established that I my results are not accurate, but there is a more important thing. Why? Why have I obtained these results? I am unsure if it was the class or if it was through my own error. There are many possible reasons. It could indeed have been the class. It is possible that this one class was very unusual. By this I mean that the boys were better or worse than usual and the girls were better or worse than usual. This is exactly why it is bad to sample such a small group. But this is only a possibility. I could have been something very small such as, I copied the results wrong. Either way, it is impossible for me to say exactly what I did wrong now.
In my observation, I noticed that girls asked for help much more than boys. Although not stated in my graphs, I witnessed many girls asking for help but I was struggling to find males who do the same. This could be because boys do not want to seem eager to work, as they may fear it may jeopardise their reputation. As I stated earlier, boys usually do not wish to be known as a “boffin” or other such names where as it does not seem to be an issue to girls. Many boys will feel the pressure to impress peers in their sub-groups as they feel this is immensely important. In the case of girls, this is very rare. This also affects educational achievements because many boys would not be aware of what is required of them where as girls will ask and recognise what is required. As girls understand and boys do not, the girls will almost certainly get a better education than most boys will. This again proves my hypotheses to be correct.
In the classroom I observed, I noticed that the majority of the people shouting out, were boys. Was this result a reflection of the whole country? I would say so because I have witnessed this many times in my own classes. Boys may feel they have a social role to act differently and attempt to create a good reputation. As they shout out so much, it is likely that their concentration will suffer. If they cannot concentrate as much as girls, the education they gain would not be of similar standard to the girls. I cannot be certain of why this is the case and I can only predict. But I believe this links back to what I stated earlier, most boys feel the pressure to impress peers and they believe this is a good way to do so. I am sure there are exceptions and some boys do not believe this is important and try their best to achieve high results. This again agrees with my hypothesis that boys disrupt classes more.
However, all of the above was contradicted by my second piece of primary data, which were test results from my sociology class. This set of data showed that the boys in the class achieved higher grades than the girls. I calculated the average score for boys and girls and I saw that the average boy achieved 14.58 whereas the average girl achieved 13.73. However, I found out that one person left halfway through. To gain fair results, I decided to discard this result and the new average boys’ result was 15.45. This shows that the boys achieved immensely higher grades than girls did in this particular class. But as this is data from only one class, it cannot be used as concrete evidence. Grades have been viewed from all over the country and it seems that girls indeed do usually achieve much higher grades than boys. As those results were obtained from the entire country and mine were only from a single class, we are led to believe that my findings are indeed very rare.
The teachers can also be an influence on the education of their students. The students, mostly boys, will possibly suffer from the labelling affect. This is when a person mentally labels another person. This happens very regularly and mostly with boys. They may be labelled as troublemakers or “stupid”. This is a very important factor because if a person is labelled “stupid”, they may fulfil that label and achieve very low grades. This is known as the self-fulfilling prophecy. As the labelling affect is mostly used on boys, it will mostly be boys who suffer from this. Therefor, the average girls’ grade will be superior to the average boys’ grade. I would have liked to add the labelling affect to my observation but I had a limited amount of time, which was not enough to complete this. It could have been possible if I had observed a class for a few lessons. I am sure I would have witnessed a teacher who tells off a certain student repetitively. This will show me that the teacher has labelled a student as a troublemaker or something similar.
Evaluation of Research Methods
I do not believe I made a very good investigation. I think this because I was unable to gain sufficient primary and secondary information and could not show sufficient evidence. If I were to make a very accurate investigation, I would have to sample around half of England, which would not be possible. There are many other possible reasons for the lack of accuracy of my observation. I could have chosen a very bad or unbalanced sample of students for example to many boys.
If I were to do this again I would definitely make changes. Firstly, I would make time to complete a covert observation because I believe this would help me gain much more accurate findings. I was unable to create one due to the lack of time available. I was only able to complete one overt observation, which I do not believe is enough. I would do more than one observation because it would give me many more results. My results may not be accurate as I only had time to carry out one observation. However, I believe my results seem reasonable and they were exactly what I was expecting except one.
At the beginning of my investigation, I predicted that girls contribute more to lessons. In my investigation, I saw that this was indeed true. But does this have a relation to the educational achievements? It is debatable whether contributing to the lesson would improve your overall achievements. To prove this right or wrong would take immense time and money. I can only predict. In my own opinion, contributing to the lesson would improve your educational achievements. I say this because if someone was to contribute much to the lesson, he or she could be corrected and learn from their mistakes. However, this is only a predication and it would be near impossible to prove this right.
I also asked twenty-five boys and twenty-five girls if they liked school or not. Six boys said they like school and fourteen girls say they like school. With this knowledge, it would seem obvious that as more girls than boys enjoy school, they should do better in school. However, after careful consideration, I realised that that is not so. My thoughts should be based more around “why” they enjoy school rather than if they do or do not enjoy school. If people enjoy school for social reasons, then this really has no relation to educational achievements. After this consideration, I now know that these results cannot really be used as concrete evidence to show why girls do better than boys in school. If I were to do this investigation again, I would ask people if they enjoy school for academic or social reasons. If I do this and the results are similar to my results now, then I would have a reason to believe that this is one of the reasons why girls do better than boys in school.
In my hypotheses, I said that boys are lazier. This was evident in my observation. I noticed that there was a very small number or males answering questions voluntarily. This has a definite relation to educational achievements. If someone was very lazy, they would not try in the lesson and this lack of effort would lead to lack of knowledge. In my opinion, for somebody to succeed in anything, they should be fully committed to their targets. Anything less leads to failure. As many boys are lazy and do not concentrate, they will suffer in the long run, as they will not know many of the things they should. This party explains why girls are so much more successful in school than boys are.
Conclusion
In conclusion, all my hypotheses except one were proved to be correct. The one that was not proved be correct was “males lose concentration in the classroom, females also do, but to a smaller extent” I predicted that
more boys than girls would lose concentration. In actual fact, I witnessed the exact opposite. This surprised me immensely but I am sure this result is very rare and I would gain very different results if I carried out more observations. I say this because in my classes, I have witnessed many boys shout. Girls also shout out, but much less than boys.
I was very surprised to see that more girls than boys failed to concentrate. This surprised me because over my years as a pupil, I have attended many classes and most of the time; it is usually the girls who are the most concentrated. I am sure that this result was a one off and I am sure that if I carried out more observations, I would witness results that are very different to the ones I gained from this observation. Unfortunately, time was not on my side and I could not complete more than one observation.
There are many other possible factors concerning educational achievement such as crime. Crime is a factor because during the teenage years, many boys are involved in some sort of crime. Starting crime at a young age will drive them to carry on with their habit. If this is the case, their education will be jeopardized. Males mostly commit crimes but the figures in female crime are rising rapidly. This is concerning many including myself. As boys are the main criminals, the boys’ grades will fall creating a tremendous gap between girls’ and boys’ grades. I would have added this into my investigation but I imagined the amount of work required completing an observation on crime would be too great.
If I were to do this assignment again, I would
Source List
Dorothy Lepkowska – The Mirror, “The Lads Done Bad”
Phil Revell – The Guardian, “Time To Put A Stop to the GCSE Circus”
Michael Lea – The Sun, “You’re GCSE Dunces lads”
Sarah Cassidy – The Independent, “Boys Told to Lift Game after Girls Increase Exam Lead”
http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/boys/examandprospects.html
http://www.parliament.the-stationery office.co.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmsctech/508/508ap29.htm
