Paul Baker: Understanding the gender gap - part 2

Dr Paul Baker, Rector of Waitaki Boys' High School and a member of the Ministerial Reference Group set up two years ago to guide the Government on boys' education is speaking today to a conference on Boys' Education at Massey University Albany Campus. These are his speaking notes.

...We're now entering highly contentious territory. Teacher gender.

No researcher has found a direct connection between teacher gender and student achievement. Some have refuted a connection by observing that the gender gap is much greater at secondary level where there are more male teachers.

If there is a connection between teacher gender and male learning, it will be more complex and subtle than that. In 1998 Farquhar outlined some of the possibilities. Male teachers are more likely to motivate boys, cater for boys' interests, provide stable male figures for students who lack them at home, and role model masculinity. NZEI commissioned and endorsed a report that reached similar conclusions.

For many boys, only mum and a female teacher are involved in their education. The danger is of a subliminal equation of education with femininity that, as Steve Biddulph observes, lead to an anti-school sub-culture from at-risk boys who "hunger for male encouragement and example".

I've spoken recently to some primary teachers who are the only male teachers in their school. They have all related how certain boys constantly seek their attention. I've also observed troubled boys in my own school who seem instinctively averse to female authority and have become skilled exponents of "protest masculinity."

What does this say about the efficacy of female teachers for boys?

An interesting insight into teacher gender comes from former teacher Noelene Wright, now at Waikato University, describing her early experiences teaching schoolboys:

"When I began teaching in an all-boys' schools, most of my experiences and understanding of the world as female was alien to the …students and the male colleagues with whom I worked. We often talked past one another. I came to understand an enormous amount about how differently many boys seemed to learn, compared with what was natural for me. This resulted in considerable reflection on my part about the kinds of teaching and learning strategies which might match these boys' learning needs better. …I found that, in contrast with the classes I had taught in an all girls' school, the boys took up much more room, were noisier, less articulate, more clumsy and less comfortable with tasks that required them to find their own solution".

Vicky McLennan, HOD English at St Andrews College, had similar culture shock entering a male classroom."Boys demand a lot of attention. Girls settle to work faster and help each other if they have difficulties. Boys seem to prefer to go it alone. They always have a dozen questions to ask before they start and it never occurs to them that the answer to someone else's question might also relate to them. ….I felt ineffectual, robbed of my most effective teaching strategies. It was obvious that my classroom management techniques did not match their learning styles".

As with Wright, reflection led to adaptation. "For teachers who have come to value quiet, order, neatness and submissive co-operation….boys inevitably suffer by comparison with girls. As teachers we have to be aware of this or we are in grave danger of selling our boys short". McLennan now extols the many virtues of boys: "open and uncomplicated…loyal and affectionate, accepting and uncritical".

How many teachers are capable of reaching an understanding, as those teachers did, of how the opposite gender learns?

We need more male teachers, but also more teachers - male or female – who by instinct or hard graft come to understand boys and connect with maleness. Teachers who consider robust, collective masculinity as a force to be celebrated and positively channelled rather than a threat to be controlled. We need less of Teacher A, A for appropriate because that's the sort of word this teacher uses all the time. Are you behaving appropriately, John? Was that an appropriate word to use, Stevie? Do we need to conference on that? Do you want to negotiate with me Wero? I spend quite a bit of time observing teachers in other secondary schools. I've seen too many Teachers As.

"What's something we've learned today" "That committees work together" "Good girl". (This is a Year Ten class.)

"Who feels their work today was good" A girl who did nothing all period raised her hand. "Good girl"

"I'll turn the music up when you guys are doing your work"

"It's awesome you guys are listening"

"Can I actually ask you to do this in silence".

"You need to actually get this done"

"That's not OK"

"Manu. Do we need to conference? Do we need to conference on that"?

Teacher A doesn't teach, Teacher A facilitates, which from my observation means continually moving around the room temporarily interrupting social chatter. Teacher A is robotic, lacks empathy or humour, gives the class no personality to relate to and consequently has no rapport with them. For boys Teacher A can be deadly.

The proportion of primary teachers who are male

Primary teachers who are male. 42 per cent in 1956, 18 per cent now. 16 per cent of trainees. Just 13.6 per cent of classroom teachers, many in Intermediates. Many boys will never be taught by a man until they reach secondary school.

Trainee figures appear to be free-falling. Between 2001 and 2006 men at Christchurch slumped from 19 per cent to 14 per cent, at Dunedin from 26 per cent to 22 per cent, and at Massey from 19 per cent to 15 per cent. The lowest proportion to be found anywhere is here, Massey Albany campus, just 11 per cent.

The critical mass of men necessary to attract other men is long gone. The consequent perception of primary teaching as a female profession has created an additional deterrent to male applicants. Penni Cushman says that the primary environment is so feminized that "it is little wonder that men choose not to teach". They can feel uncomfortable and vulnerable in both the classroom and the staff room.

Studies have identified three other reasons for diminishing male primary applications: perceived low pay (even after pay parity was introduced); perceived low social status and what is called 'the Peter Ellis Syndrome' - men's vulnerability to allegations of child abuse.

Christchurch says the reason for the drop is a steady decline in the number of good men applying. Males have a lower acceptance rate and then a lower retention rate than females. This may be partly a reaction to the "feminized" environment that Cushman also finds at Colleges of Education. A friend of mine, already deeply uncertain about his career choice, reacted in the extreme. A female lecturer walked in to his first group meeting and said "now hands up who's in Group A". My friend walked out. He had spent precisely seven minutes at Teachers College, possibly a record.

Percentage of Sec Teachers who are male

Secondary teachers who are male. 59 per cent in 1971, 42 per cent now and dropping even faster than at Primary. This must be arrested before Secondary teaching is also seen as a female profession.

ERO and the National Party have both called for more male teachers. Mr Mallard said: "I am yet to find a parent who would prefer their child to be taught by an inferior male teacher rather than a better woman teacher" - to which we might reply: "We have yet to find an educationalist who has called for this".

It's not about lowering the threshold of male entry, but about attracting some of those outstanding young men who might once have been teachers but are now kayak instructors or youth workers or personal trainers or out of work actors. Boosting male numbers won't be easy. Campaigns in Australia have failed. Auckland is the only Faculty or College of Education I've found with any strategies, grouped under a project tentatively called MATEs (Males into Teacher Education). Rotorua Boys' High School is to be commended for offering two annual scholarships for ex-students who enter Teacher Education.

The debate about Primary males has quickly deteriorated into gender politics. There's feminist resentment that the inadequacies of some fathers have caused male primary teachers to be valued over female primary teachers, and Alton Lee has described some arguments for more male teachers as "misogynist discourses that undervalue women teachers". Murrays' Bay Intermediate Principal Fay Mason says "It's not the school's job to provide fathers". Keren Brooking complains about the "ongoing silence in society about the responsibilities of the fathers who have abandoned these boys, and instead blame for the single mothers and women teachers who are left to deal with the problem". There's also veiled criticism about the quality of male teachers. If there must be more men, some say, please not blokey blokes in walk shorts.

How well prepared are new trainees to teach boys? This question sent a number of institutions scurrying – for information or for cover. Unlike some Australian Universities – Newcastle in particular – no university offers a paper specifically or even partially on boys' education, though Massey at Albany is planning one. Most Colleges of Education cover "boys' ed" in a few lectures, and a few have special courses or electives.

One Education Faculty has offered to host a symposium on males in teaching. It's hard to see how the Primary situation can be redeemed, but it's not too late for Secondary. We need more research both on why males increasingly are shunning even Secondary teaching, and on the various ways in which teacher gender can impact on student outcomes.

The controversy barometer's still rising.

What impact do school and class gender have on boys' achievement and the gender gap?

Here are more examples of teachers who understand boys:

Teacher A says: when's he's teaching a new song, he gives the girls some background but the boys just want to get into it.

Teacher B says: when teaching boys avoid any question that starts "How would you feel…"

Teacher C says: girls under-rate their abilities and boys over-rate. One gender needs encouragement and the other a reality check.

We could continue through several alphabets with examples of the need for differentiated practice. But in a co-ed environment how can this be achieved? .

In a single sex classroom, undiluted maleness may appear to intensify the challenge for a teacher, but it also simplifies the response.

There are 66 boys' high schools in New Zealand, attended by about a quarter of our teenage boys.

Economist Brian Easton analyzed 2002 NCEA results and found that, after decile had been controlled for, those boys were still 9 per cent ahead of boys in co-ed schools.

I found similar margins in 2005 NCEA results.

ERO and researchers in Canada, Australia and England have also found greater performance by single-sex boys, after socio-economic factors were controlled for. In fact I have encountered no study that shows the reverse.

Critics maintain that this single sex advantage, even when decile is controlled for, is not because of value added by boys' schools but because of the type of student they attract. If so, I doubt that this is the full explanation. For example, my own boys' school caters for all but Catholic boys in Oamaru, and hugely outperforms co-ed boys – and girls - of the same decile.
In 1999 ERO grudgingly conceded the superior academic performance of boys' schools, while simultaneously criticising their quality in pedagogy, curriculum, student safety, and catering for the needs of all boys. Goodness, how did they still do so well? The answer may lie in another ERO observation: boys do best where there is order, and focus on learning. These qualities remain leading characteristics of boys' schools.

There was some foundation to ERO's criticisms, which were being echoed in the community. Two 1990's research studies of student cultures in boys' schools found unattractive features. In the past decade many boys' schools have re-invented themselves. Their work ethic and competitive focus have been enhanced by strong programmes for student safety, promoting and valuing a vastly wider range of sporting and cultural activities, and masculinities.

If you're unconvinced, here's some evidence. In a co-ed school, activities ranging from choir to Library to orchestra to social services are generally dominated by girls. The average co-ed choir has thirty girls and four blokes at the back If you think I'm exaggerating, read some co-ed school magazines. In my survey of co-ed principals, nearly a half reported that leadership and service positions within the school (other than those allocated evenly on gender basis) were mainly taken by girls.

A Northland co-ed teacher told me about recent efforts to set up a boys' choir. "We've just had the first muster, about 12 guys, including a couple of respected senior Maori boys, a few musos, and some poor souls looking to fit in. We have a list of songs, a music teacher, a piano and a couple of interested male staff. By Deans' accounts, the boys in the junior and senior assemblies all greeted the news of the choir with something approaching disdain".

But, optimistically, he writes "one good performance will turn it around".

In Boys' Schools, by contrast, boys participate prodigiously, enthusiastically, and without denigration in anything that's going. Waitaki has six choirs involving 150 boys, 30 Librarians, 30 Dancers, 20 Theatresportsmen, umpteen musical groups, and each year we produce six or seven long and short plays, all in a small town decile 6 school of 550 boys. We're also very successful in sport.

It takes critics of boys' schools a while to get their heads around the fact that in boys' schools, boys are far less image or even gender conscious, and much freer to be themselves. This is a continual finding of research in many countries, and it extends even to subject choice, with far more boys doing 'girls subjects'. Australian research even found that boys in boys' schools were more confident in relationships with girls. That would be news to men of my age, who are wont to blame any relational or sexual dysfunction on their single sex schooling. From my observation, as I drive down the main street of Oamaru after school, single sex boys today have no difficulty whatsoever in relating to girls.

There's no better or more impartial observer of boys' schools than Celia Lashlie. She sent her son to one but never believed in it. More recently she spent three days in each of twenty boys' school's undertaking the Good Man project. Her attitudinal change is reflected in a chapter heading of her recent book: The Wonderful World of Boys' Schools.

Celia found that entering boys' schools was a case of 'welcome to the world of men', with a strong underlying message that to be male is to be okay. She found loyalty and hard work and belonging. She was stunned by the physicality of boys, and came to appreciate that "sport is something boys' schools both do exceedingly well and use very effectively in their management of students".

She realized the importance of clear boundaries – who's in charge, what do I have to do, what will happen if I don't. Most of all, she came to understand the role of tradition : "…the essence of maleness. It's about connection, about linkages to the past that show the pathways to the future and it's about excellence".

This former critic of boys' schools was mightily impressed with what she saw.

Received wisdom used to be that girls did better academically without the distraction of boys, but boys did worse without the superior example of girls.

Excellence Awards

The superior example of girls is certainly apparent in co-ed schools. Recently I've seen

• An Otago co-ed that holds regular excellence assemblies at which just 30 per cent of the awards go to males.

• A South Canterbury High School which proudly displays its nine top NCEA Scholars in the front page of the local paper. Eight of them are girls.

• A South Auckland school with a dozen school leaders, only two of them male as "no other suitable boys could be found".

• A Wellington co-ed in which in 2003, 19 of the top 20 achieving students in NCEA, and 27 of the top 30, were girls.

I could go on.

For every boy who is inspired by the superior examples of girls, there are probably ten who find it off-putting. It can foster an insidious cop-out mentality in which boys withdraw from challenge for fear of humiliation, and label academic success and all its ingredients as 'what girls do'.

The evidence suggests that teenage boys learn and develop best in a male environment

But where does that leave us? Should we be building or converting to single sex? There has not been a new state single sex school for half a century. National's 2005 manifesto uncompromisingly stated that both girls and boys "do better" in a single sex environment and Bill English says National will support one if the local community does. It's a policy unlikely to be tested, particularly as it would in fact have to be two.

The best of both worlds, says Michael Gurian, author of Boys and Girls Learn Differently, is single sex classes within co-ed schools. ERO and the British Ministry of Education have both recommended this. Two New Zealand boys schools that recently imported the superior example of girls, Mount Albert Grammar School and St Kentigern's College, now operate this "best of both worlds" in their junior classes, with reported success.

There's copious overseas research on single sex classes in co-ed schools. Their success ranged from transformational, to modest, to non-existent. One study found a deterioration in male behaviour. Contrary to expectation, none found Lord of the Flies. The difficulty in learning from such examples is that they are all so deeply contextualized. When challenging boys are placed in well resourced environment with a tailor-made curriculum and a hand-picked teacher almost invariably their performance will improve – and this often has been the context of single sex classes. What change will occur for average boys with a normal curriculum and an average teacher?

The Ministry has no information on single sex classes and I've found no local academic study on them. I surveyed all New Zealand co-ed schools and found just twelve with boys' only classes. They generally provided under-achieving boys with male-friendly and often sports-orientated curriculum. For example in one school, for NCEA English Speech, boys provided a commentary for a rugby test. Some were home room classes, others operated in selected subjects, mainly English. The learning ethos was strict, competitive, structured and positive, with a strong pastoral emphasis. Some spectacular successes were reported.

And what do the boys feel about it? Some comments from boys in Australian boys only classes:

"It makes me feel I can express myself freely"

"I am paying more attention in class"

"I could talk about stuff without being embarrassed"

"I don't feel intimidated in English by girls any more"

A comprehensive study of boys' only classes in New Zealand now needs to be undertaken.

Beyond boys' only classes, how can co-ed schools promote the education and welfare of boys?

This process must be akin to walking on eggshells. I surveyed co-ed schools to see what they currently do for boys:

Of the 59 Schools that responded:

Almost half cited nothing special or specific for boys. One principal stated "We struggle with this. We know it's a problem but are a bit bankrupt of ideas".

Questionnaire responses also raised doubts as to the level of statistical analysis being undertaken in some co-eds, or the extent of gender gap that is considered acceptable.

Three schools stated their male results were better than female, 19 similar, 35 worse and 2 much worse. Those who stated similar included schools with overall gender gaps in 2004 of 26 percentage points, 14, 12, 12 , 10, 10 and 8. One school that claimed better results had a gender gap of 8.

Just a handful of co-ed schools appear to be showing initiative and leadership in boys' education – and, incidentally, sent submissions to the Ministerial Reference Group. Kaitaia College has a staff Boys' Initiative Group, formed after the 2004 Massey Conference. The school where I laboured under a typing bib 35 years ago, Rangitoto College, has 45 staff volunteers in a project entitled 'Building Exceptional Young Men'. Subcommittees are developing strategies to promote boys' achievement in teaching and learning, literacy, relationships, community and leadership. Darfield High School has over almost a decade developed and refined a motivational programme for boys now called FLAMES – Fostering Learning and Motivation in Education Through Sport.

The responses of co-ed schools to boys' needs require more thorough investigation. Nevertheless, the apparently huge diversity of responses led to my next research question:

What difference can a co-ed school make to male achievement?

PISA 2000 Reading Literacy statistics show New Zealand with the largest within-school variance of any country and one of the smallest between-school variances. That our schools are of reasonably similar quality, and not a major variable on learning, has quickly become received wisdom. John Hattie writes "Schools barely make a difference to achievement" and cites a raft of studies in support.

Our progress at Waitaki has encouraged me in the belief that schools can make a difference.

So I did some initial research.

Range of Gender Gap in Co-ed Schools

5 per cent of schools have a gender gap over 20 percentage points. The highest gap is 27.

49 per cent have gaps over the national average of 10 and 85 per cent have gaps over 5, which might be considered the threshold for concern.

Despite all this, 8 per cent of schools manage to achieve overall gaps favouring boys.

I also compared male pass rates in co-ed schools, decile by decile. In most deciles the range is huge: 30-40 percentage points. The highest range is at Decile 6, where the best performing school passes 76 per cent of its boys; the worst performing just 22 per cent.

I found two Waikato schools, predominantly Maori, with significant gender gaps favouring boys. I then found eight Northland schools, predominantly or significantly Maori, all with large gender gaps favouring girls, four over 20 per cent - but one Northland school with a 9 per cent gap favouring boys.

Either the school/community characteristics are not as similar as they appear on paper, or the difference is indeed made by the school.

I found that a prima facie case existed that schools do make a difference, and I investigated further.

I set out to identify the co-ed schools where boys are achieving well, so we can learn from their examples of best practice.

I was aware of the methodological flaws of two earlier attempts, including one by ERO, at this process. If you are interested, there is an outline of their methodology and mine in the conference papers.

Flaws aside, it may still be useful to report that ERO found that in schools where boys did well had positive relationships, good attitudes to work, high behavioural standards, mutual trust and respect, excellent initiatives for Maori learning, peer tutoring or mentoring early intervention strategies for "at risk" students.

Schools where boys did poorly had "a culture of non-achievement for boys", equity policies that seemed to apply to girls only, low student motivation and interest, and poor behaviour and discipline, even in Decile 9 and 10 schools.

My investigation found 14 schools where boys perform particularly well and 24 schools where they do badly.

In each category, the schools vary in size, location and ethnicity. The only significant feature is that of the 14 top schools, 69 per cent have a roll that is 59 per cent male or more, and of the 24 bottom schools only 44 per cent do. This suggests that schools where boys do well are more likely to attract and retain boys.

In then read ERO reports of all the schools. Here I found strong shared characteristics of what I will call boy friendly and boy unfriendly schools.

Of the 14 boy friendly schools, 13 had very positive ERO reports. They were clearly good schools.

I asked these schools why they thought their boys did well. None had programmes specifically for boys. But all had an intense focus on continual improvement, on teaching and learning, on strong pastoral and disciplinary systems and on positivity. Most knew their boys were profiting hugely from all this.

I was immensely impressed with what I read and heard; there's outstanding work going on in some of our co-ed schools.

For example Kamo High School has an innovative Junior Students Programme and a comprehensive student support centre. Trident High School in Whakatane has carefully crafted its curricular and co-curricular programme to meet the needs of its Decile 4, 40 per cent Maori roll. Takapuna Grammar School has a strong emphasis on pedagogy and achievement.

A Thames Valley school says "several years ago we had a real culture of "it's nerdish to achieve" academically, especially for boys. For example, when giving out academic awards in assembly, students would not come forward to receive awards. It was seen as a mark of shame". Through relentless positivity and promotion of achievement in all areas the school managed to turn this culture around. Now, the Principal writes, "It will be refreshing when we have a dux who is a girl". To the 24 boy-unfriendly schools.

NCEA results indicate the extent of their problems. For example in a Hawkes Bay school males comprised 32 per cent of the roll, in itself a suggestion of failure, 20 per cent of external entries, and even fewer passes. In a Manawatu school females accounted for two thirds of external entries and gender gaps favouring females were 15 percentage points in Science, 24 in Arts, 29 in English and 30 in Language. In a Decile 10 Auckland school, subject gaps included 18 in English, and 19 in Social Sciences and in Language.

Eight of these schools had poor ERO reports and eight very poor – they were in serious and sustained trouble with regular ERO supplementary reports. Three had statutory managers.

My conclusion: when schools, whatever the decile, function well, gender gaps are smaller; when schools, whatever the decile, do badly, the gap grows and when they are haemorrhaging it is huge.

Boys are less intrinsically motivated and disciplined than girls. They need more extrinsic motivators and controls. When those motivators and controls are absent, boys are like the canary in the coal mine – the first to respond.

Now to a flaw in my rationale. I wonder if you have spotted it. Using only statistics I can not prove that schools alone make a difference because I can not differentiate between school, school composition and school community. Some schools will have a composition or community that has a direct bearing on their achievement level but is not reflected in their decile. For example one boy-unfriendly school suffers a distinct lack of good male role modelling as it is in a prison town and many boys shifted there, with their mums or their Dad's partners, to be closer to imprisoned Dad. Another school suffers from what the principal describes as an endemic, drug based, tall poppy syndrome amongst Maori in the district, and a tendency for Pakeha boys, but not Girls, to gravitate towards their Maori peers. I've been humbled by the handicaps that some ostensibly boy-unfriendly schools grapple with, though I doubt that all do, certainly not the Decile 10 Auckland school.

Community factors may also be a factor for some boy-friendly schools. One lost academic girls to another school; another lost non-academic boys to Polytech, in both cases reducing the gender gap.

Case studies of individual school composition and community will need to augment NZQA and ERO data before we can see how much schools do make a difference, and which schools make the most difference.

Another variable is the cohort. Every boy-friendly school has at least one year group where boys are significantly outperformed by girls, while in the boy-unfriendly schools similar cohort variation produces some huge gender gaps, the highest being 58 percentage points.

Having discovered schools where best practice for boys might be found, to then be shared, I then discovered another methodological challenge that has bedevilled previous efforts.

Schools are complex and dynamic institutions with too many variables for proper evaluation of any single strategy, and most strategies are deeply contextualized.

The Cambridge Raising Boys Achievement Project noted that in some of the schools where boys did well "the good results were a bit of a mystery. The schools were often simply throwing every strategy they could think of at the problem. Their teachers were not sure which worked well and why".

So it's the number 8 wire for educational innovation. Almost all strategies for boys I've come across have been home-grown, sometimes principle-driven ("boys' only classes are supposed to be good so let's try them) but mainly pragmatic ("what the hell can we do with those boys"), though nevertheless informed by current thinking.

Strategies for boosting boys' achievement and behaviour can be categorized as:

1. Measures specifically aimed at boys' needs, such as boys' only classes or mentoring

2. Gender-neutral whole class or whole school measures from which boys may benefit more than girls because of boys' greater need for motivation and direction.

In an excellent report, which I have summarized in your conference notes, OFSTED lists a raft of school characteristics which can lift male performance. No surprises: discipline, structure, focus, high expectations, active learning, pastoral support and a strong co-curricular programme. The same characteristics found in ERO reports on our boy-friendly schools – and category 2.

The most common conclusion of overseas educationalists, from Martin to Slade to Rowe to Hawkes is that boys' achievement will be boosted the most by improving the standard of teaching, and the quality of teacher-student relationships, without reference to specific teaching styles for boys. Better teaching will still probably benefit boys more than girls. This was the finding of a major Cambridge University study on strategies used by British schools to narrow the gender gap. It has been endorsed by a recent Tauranga Boys' College survey.

Again, Category 2.

Initiatives reported by "boy-friendly" schools were all category 2.

Maybe they didn't try category 1 because they didn't have to. Before we write category 1 off, remember that other schools have reported success with category 1 initiatives, particularly single sex classes, though category 1 deficit model withdrawal schemes are often criticized.

Far more research is necessary before we can evaluate the relative potential of categories 1 and 2. For co-ed schools seeking to improve male performance this is one of the key questions.

Arnot says "The overwhelming message from research is that there are no simple explanations for the gender gap…nor any simple solutions". Hightower adds "Whatever problems boys have, there is no simple solution, no "tips for teachers' formula that can "fix" boys….The best policy is perhaps to leave no reasonable option off the table.". Indeed. No one solution or even a dozen will do. Included i