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British system of education is failing to give boys the help they need and has become too focused on girls, the headmaster of Eton warned today.
Tony Little said GCSEs favour girls far more than boys and few teachers understand that boys are “more emotional” than girls, despite girls being able to “turn on the waterworks”.
Boys require a much more physical and active style of learning but too often schools believe the same lessons will serve both sexes equally well, he said.
Mr Little, whose school has been boys only for nearly 600 years, and other leading heads are launching a campaign to highlight the need for a new approach to educating boys.
The International Boys' Schools Coalition conference, at the Guildhall today, heard that boys and girls need alternative styles of teaching which could be in single sex schools or single sex classrooms within co-educational schools.
Speaking to the Standard, Mr Little, who is hosting the conference with City of London School headmaster David Levin, said society was reluctant to acknowledge that the education system is failing boys.
“As a nation, we do not support and nurture boys, especially teenage boys, at all well,” he said. “It is foolish to assume that boys can always be helped in the same way as girls. We feel our education system needs to face up to that fact.”
GCSE exams became much more verbal than the old O-levels, he said, thereby favouring girls over boys. The unwillingness to engage with the problem stems from the fact that men dominated opportunities in society in the past.
“It's assumed that opening up opportunity means giving a better deal to girls and women. I don't decry that in the slightest — we have moved hugely forward,” he said.
“But there's a point at which that agenda has been at the expense of recognising what's happening in boys and education.”
Mr Levin suggested the idea of boys-only schools attracted a lot of “baggage” typified by the bullying in Tom Brown's Schooldays.
The novel fuelled the idea that boys in boys' schools “do nasty things to each other and nasty things to women”, Mr Levin said.
Reader views (12)
Stop all the class sniping, this man is spot on. What boy between 12 and 16+ isn't trying to show the female of his species that he is macho etc etc. The last thing he wants in a mixed class of girls & boys is to be asked a question he may not be able to answer. His mind will not be 100% on school work, however, as with all species, the female learns how to deal with life and sees the seriousness of it much earlier, hence leaves the males well behind. They must be schooled seperately after the age of 12.
- Colin, Grimsby, 22/01/2010 18:57
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Ah, the privileged come to the defence of the spongers of the private sector.
In reality public schools are allowed to evade the high standards of the state sector. For example, they employ teachers with no professional training at all.
The world is full of people who whine that the local state school isn't good enough for their little darlings.
Then, when it suits them, they slip back into the state sector. Oxford and Cambridge are deformed by having to take the privileged rich at the expense of hard-working ordinary people.
- Jo, London, 20/01/2010 13:09
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@ Jo, London. The ignorance of your remarks showcases your gut-feel, anti-intellectual preconceptions. To help you out:-
1. What does the headmaster of Eton know about state education? Education is a concept and its ideals are equally applicable, regardless of how it's funded. What is there to know about state education other than it's underfunded? The rest is about syllabus and teaching methods.
2. It's a scandal that Eton is still allowed to get away with being a charitable institution, as its only charity is to the very rich. Total crap - if you understood anything, you'd realise that most public schools' charitable status is critical to enable maintenance of old buildings. And most grant very many bursaries (that's a handout in your world).
3. It's also a scandal that people who go to Eton and other public schools are allowed to slip back into state education when it suits them, i.e. at university level. Eh? Wouldn't you rather have your kids taught by a PhD from Oxbridge than someone with 5 CSEs from the local comp? Are you arguing for academic excellence or social equality? Are you able to tell the difference without a dictionary?
Get back to school, Jo. It seems you played truant a few too many times to make a coherent point, comrade.
- David, London, 20/01/2010 12:26
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@ Jo, London
Jesus get real. You'll be another die-hard Labour supporter determined to drag everyone down with you into the sink hole of ignorance and despair.
If the great noted intellects from this countrys history thought like you and "Nu Labour inn'it", this country would not even register on the map of the world.
Fortunately non-Labour voters strive for much higher ideals and goals that are not set out in yet another failed social engineering policy from this government.
- Frank, Home Counties, England., 20/01/2010 11:14
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What does the headmaster of Eton know about state education? Nothing.
It's a scandal that Eton is still allowed to get away with being a charitable institution, as its only charity is to the very rich.
It's also a scandal that people who go to Eton and other public schools are allowed to slip back into state education when it suits them, i.e. at university level.
- Jo, London, 19/01/2010 14:03
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Squiz: good quote from that astute businessman and self-made millionaire Denis Thatcher! Personally I'd be happy if my boys turned out as well as any of these male role-models because they are all achievers who try to contribute the society in which they live. Keeping stum is, of course, the easier option which most of the rest of us take.
I'm mightily grateful that Feminists have done an excellent job at getting women equality, but the balance has in some respects tipped too far: look at the inequality of British men's rights post-divorce or seperation. Anyone who has boys will know that they behave quite differently from girls and vice versa right from the start: the differences should be acknowledged rather than 'brought into line' with an erroneous notion of normality. As usual in the UK, the message is being ignored because the person who is delivering it is at the top of his profession and therefore has his views discounted by people with chips on their shoulders . . .
- Roz (Mouthy Cow And Self-Confessed Fool), France, 19/01/2010 12:11
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And in what way would you feel that Cameron, Osbourne and Johnson are failures, Ian of the UK? - or are you just being silly....
- Paddy, Belfast, 19/01/2010 11:36
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He doesn't want to be too vocal: they'll pass a new law just for him, compelling him to accept girls and doing to his school what has been done to the state schools: relentless feminisation, course work, everyone getting 10 A* GCSEs, and no one able to read and write or get a job.
- Neil, People'S Republic Of Europe (Formerly England), London UK, 19/01/2010 11:22
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Quite right - boys and girls need to be taught separately and differently.
You’re at school for a-learnin` not to parade fashionable clothes or to impress the girlies with your sporting ability or trendy trainers.
Crikey, you’d have thought ten years was enough time to learn at least the three "R`s", but nowadays youth is so slickly marketed and tied up with "cool" and trashy celeb culture, body image etc that education (EdooK8shn) needs to adapt to fight this moral cancer.
They’ve GOT to be taught in school AT LEAST that what’s INSIDE the heads is ultimately more important that what’s ON it.
- Darius, London, 19/01/2010 11:00
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are you sure your grandfather didn't say "better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it" ?
- Squiz, Islington, 19/01/2010 10:45
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Ian - my grandfather had a saying: better to be known as a fool than not to be known at all . . .
- Roz, France, 19/01/2010 10:18
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When it come to the education system failing boys Mr Little obviously knows what he's talking about. At least it does if you judge it by messers Cameron, Osbourne and Johnson .....
- Ian, UK, 19/01/2010 09:56
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