Boys fall further behind girls in school: report
Published: 8 Nov 12 13:25 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/44314/20121108/
There is an increasing difference between the performance of girls and boys in Swedish schools, with girls pulling away from their male counterparts, according to new statistics published by the National Agency for Education (Skolverket).
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“We have known for a long time that girls have better school results than boys. What is new is that the results are increasing. There has always been a gap, but now it is bigger,” Sandström explained.
On Wednesday, Skolverket published the school results of this summer’s ninth-year students. These results showed that girls’ school results were an average of 223.8 (out of 320), whereas boys scored an average of 199.5.
The statistics also showed that more girls qualified for high school (gymnasiet) programmes than boys.
Skolverket concluded that though results are improving for most student groups, boys with a foreign background and boys with less educated parents are actually performing worse.
“I do not begrudge any success for the girls, but it would be terribly serious to lose a generation of boys and immigrants,” Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) told the TT news agency.
Christina Sandström underlined that while the difference between the grade point average for girls and boys may seem small in numerical terms, when applied to 100,000 students, a gap of over 20 points is actually very significant.
”It takes a lot to make a major change”.
Meanwhile, Social Democrat Ibrahim Baylan is more worried about the general decrease in students that qualify for high school (gymnasiet) programmes, for the 6th year in a row.
The report indicated that proportion of qualified students decreased from 87.7 percent to 87.5 percent.
“The current school policy has reached the end of the road. The government is simply not doing the right thing,” Baylan told TT.
Sandström recognized that while the change is small, the trend is clear in that the results are getting worse.
“We want results to be better. We have implemented a new syllabus and it is very important that schools take the new goals for education seriously,” she continued.
“We have made changes within school regulations, but it is important that schools also implement these modifications.”
Sandström said that research is ongoing into why girls systematically achieve better results than boys at this level, but there is currently no definitive explanation.
”I don’t know if we ever can solve it,” she said.
TT/Sanne Schim van der Loeff
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External link: Official press release by Skolverket (in Swedish) »
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It's fashion now among boys in Swedish schools to have a gangsta attitude. To don't give a s....about your teacher, your school friends, don't respect the girls and pretend that you are a real troublemaker.
Do parents know what kind of music their children are listening to? or the video games they play? or what do they do in the school or after the school? No. And they don't care.
It doesn't matter how much money you put in the schools because unless you put some discipline in the school, it won't work. Ban cellulars from school and allow teachers take disciplinary actions if the student is behaving bad.
According to your theory, those who "behave badly" should have impacted the girls also, since if a student speaks on the phone or beats the teacher to death in the class, girls hardly have an advantage.
These statistics are not so different from other countries. Boys ARE less successful in schools. They are however more successful in life. They are statistically rougher in negotiation, present more design breakthroughs, hold more patents etc.
Genetic predisposition, you see, when male brain developed while hunting and female one, while observing the children development and male inventions.
That is also why men can concentrate on one thing (but deeply), while women can do many things at once (but touching the surface). Men survived while standing their ground against predators, while women - grabbing the kids and running in forests and swamps. (Females have proportionally longer legs, bigger leg muscles and wider field of vision, while male torso is bigger and bones are harder)
Why the learning diff is more pronounced now? Perhaps it is related to parents dropping the ball here (in line with your theory), when the boys are slipping from control faster than girls.
Clearly you've no experience from the Swedish school system at all. Ironically, it's always people like yourself with the least experience or knowledge that proclaims to be experts on how things are or should be done.
Cellphones ARE banned in classrooms in Sweden and measurements will be taken against the student if he/she break the rule. There ARE lots of discipline rules in the schools, which if breaken repeatedly will be confronted with a system of further steps of actions (google åtgärdstrappan), with everything from detention in the morning before school starts to suspension or relocation if things haven't improved.
This is not something unique to Sweden, it's always been like this more or less everywhere. Note that the author mentions immigrant boys and boys coming from family with low education background are prominent in the statistics. I'm not surprised over this as the attitude to perform well in school is largely affected by how it is valued by the parents.
This is not something unique to Sweden, Go check the statistics for any country in the world and you'll find the sam pattern more or less everywhere. Note that the author mentions boys with immigrant background and boys coming from family with low education background are prominent in the statistics. I'm not surprised over this as the attitude to perform well in school is largely affected by how it is valued by the parents.
Clearly you've no experience from the school system but I'm not surprised.
Ironically, it's always people like yourself that tends to proclaim to be experts on how things are and what should be done.
Cellphones ARE banned in classrooms in Sweden and has been for a long time now. There ARE lots of rules to follow in the schools as they are obliged by law to set up official discipline rules. If the students break them repeatedly, there is a system with steps of disciplinary actions that will be taken, with everything from detention in the morning before school starts to suspension or relocation if nothing has improved.
whilst the boys are out and about being rambunctious, the girls are encouraged to sit down quietly and colour in and play with dolls.
Hence the girls from holding pencils etc earlier on develop much stronger muscles in their hands and learn to write earlier on and hence read earlier on.
boys struggle with writing because of a simple thing of not being able to hold a pen. with each new child we encouraged colouring in and drawing from an early age. by simply looking at letters and numbers all the time and being able to copy them they grasped reading and writing earlier and earlier.
I think the picture says it all.
The tendency are not so different, but the difference beetween boys and girls in Sweden one of the highest. Look at the last PISA test (2009):
Reading: The OECD avarage girls result is better by 39 points, but in Sweden girls result better by 47 points.
Mathematic: The OECD avarage boys result is better by 12 points, but in Sweden girls result is better by 3 points.
PIRLS and TIMMS result are the same difference beetween Sweden and other countries.
If I would be one easy to argue with, I would just take your stats and not notice that you actually took specific disciplines, whereas the article talks about averages.
GCSE "A" Grade 2011- Girls 26.5%, boys - 19.8%
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2029847/GCSE-results-2011-Record-results--boys-fall-girls.html
Great Britain and New Zealand show the same effects on GPA: already in 1992 the difference jumped up from 4,4 to 12,2 marks (girls of course are better performers).
http://www.williamdraves.com/works/boys.htm
(really scientific research and conclusions)
As for the US:
"Nationwide in 2003, women earned 60% of all associate degrees, 58% of all bachelor's degrees and 59% of all master's degrees, according to the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics"
Would give you the link, if the site would allow it.
Girls are dominating the AVERAGES!
Yes I can give the link for PISA 2009:
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/46660259.pdf
Reading (site 17), Mathematic (site 23):
There are other international tests, like PIRLS (it measure the 10 year olds reading achievement), the result is the same, Sweden gender gap is higher than avarage.
link: http://mek.oszk.hu/09300/09326/09326.pdf