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Contents
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1 Attitude towards school and Behavioural Issues
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3 Stereotypes
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3 The Difference Between Literacy and Numeracy In Boys’ and Girls’
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4 Strategies Employed by the School to Combat the Gender Gap
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Involve the Boys’ in Sporting Activities
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3 Reading Programmes and Resources
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1 Underachievement
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3 Pleasure of Reading
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Conclusion
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1 Recommendations
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2 Limitations
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Bibliography
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Appendices
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1 Appendix A
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2 Appendix B- Focus Group Questions
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3 Appendix C- St Mary’s Code of Practice Document
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4 Appendix D- NFER Scores
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Introduction
In recent years in Northern Ireland there have been reports into the underachievement of
boys’ at both primary and secondary levels in schools and the reasons why boys’
underperform compared to girls’
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Gallagher (1997) cites that the rate of improvement
for girls’ tends to be higher than that of boys’; however it should be noted that there are
other contributing factors on performance in schools other than gender including social
class, religion and ethnicity (Grubb)
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The underachievement of boys’ in primary education can be highlighted in

DENI’s (2008) research showing that in the school year 05/06 showing that 72
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4% of girls’
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Based on these statistics I have chosen to complete my research on the reasons boys’
underachieve in schools across Northern Ireland and some of the strategies that can be
implemented from a whole-school perspective and from a teachers perspective to combat
the gender gap
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The school in which the research
will be carried out is a co-educational school and so through liaising with the staff of this
school, mainly the principle and the SENCO, I hope to ascertain the underlying problems to
the underachievement of boys’
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Literature Review
In light of this research by DENI on underperforming boys’ the question must be raised as to
why boys’ underachieve in subjects particularly where literacy is concerned
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From the report it is evident that these factors will combine in most cases to impact
upon the performance of boys’ at any particular time
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For example, the ways in
which pupils are grouped, the way in which their work is assessed…the role models they are
offered” (Arnot et al, 1998)
Any measures that assist the improvement of attainment levels in boys’ in literacy and
numeracy should always consider underlying problems but as literacy is the vehicle for
learning it should be noted that poor literacy will affect all subjects, not just English (Ofsted,
2003)
The lack of male role-models is an area particularly relevant to boys’ underperforming in
Northern Ireland
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This shows that a lot of boys’ are being
raised with little or no male influence in their lives
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Beresford (2000)
cites the importance of teachers as behavioural role models for students has contributed to
the disquiet over the decreasing number of males attracted to the teaching profession
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The Australian government (2002) state that “Women and men can be
equally good teachers of boys’ and girls’ and the quality of the teacher is more important
than the gender”
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Shaffer and
Kipp (2009) cite Martin & Fabes (2001) when they stated ‘boys’ are simply too boisterous
and domineering to suit the taste of many girls’, who prefer less roughhousing and would
rather rely on polite negotiations’
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In a number of studies (for example Gentile, Lynch, Linder & Walsh, 2004) it has been shown
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that the average period of playing games for boys’ is 13 hours a week
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“The activity itself
can be addictive and when taken to an extreme can inhibit not only performance in schools
but performance in extra-curricular activities” (Gentile et al, 2004)
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It has been argued by Younger
et al (1999) that many students prefer female students, as they are better organised and
more confident when it comes to learning
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Freedmon (2003) cites the Canadian National Longitudinal Study on Children finding that
teachers rated girls’ better at literacy in the early years in relation to their verbal ability
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Learning styles is a very contemporary issue in the education system
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The work of the Ofsted
report into boys’’ achievement found that boys’ responded better where they carefully
structured work in lessons
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The revised curriculum for Northern Ireland (2007)
tries to fuse this through the idea of topic based teaching where children can take control to
a certain extent of what they will be taught
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Overall there is a
general consensus that there is a greater disaffection from learning amongst boys’ than
girls’
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Powney 1996 found that girls’ have more positive attitudes towards
reading and writing than boys’ “boys’ consider the literacy experience as female from an
early age”

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Peer pressure and discipline issues are the final areas to affect boys’’ underperformance
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Girls’ on the other hand derived status amongst peers from performing well
in school
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It is stated in this report that a greater
proportion of boys’ suffer from Attention-Deficit Disorder and Attention-Deficit/
Hyperactive Disorder meaning that from the start it will be harder to engage boys’ in lesson
content
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Teachers must constantly think
of ways to raise standards of boys’ in the classroom and keep them motivated and on task
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Teachers must be aware of this and plan
accordingly to suit the specific needs of boys’
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 Individualised approaches
 Pedagogical approaches
 Whole-school approaches; and
 System-level approaches
Individualised approaches such as target setting and mentoring are useful strategies that are
practical for all schools
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Younger et al (2005) state that target-setting can have a positive impact
on performance but that it needs to be realistic and challenging to the pupil
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Mentoring is used to give boys’ direction and to let them know that there are certain
expectations of achievement placed on them
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(MacCallum, Beltman& Palmer 2005)
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Pedagogical approaches suggest that teachers should be aware about the differences in the
preferred learning styles and behaviour of boys’ and girls’ and as a result be able to adopt a
range of teaching strategies to help the lesson flow
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Following this the report listed some features which
could help motivate boys’ in lessons
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The interactive whiteboard experience can bring the lesson to life and can
help motivate all children to be active in their own learning
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The Revised Curriculum for Northern Ireland (CCEA 2007) buys into the idea of
topic teaching to motivate and engage children
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Whole school approaches focus on every school being a good school for any pupil to
develop
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This in turn suggests to teachers that specific
approaches need to be developed in every school
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It must be noted that each school will have a different ethos and so
each teacher should have an individual role in meeting the ethos of the school alongside
raising the standards of each child
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They suggest that;
leadership in schools acts as a catalyst without which other good things are unlikely to
happen
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The school as a whole should try where possible to include the parents to make them active
participants in their children’s education
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When fathers become active in their children’s education then the children are more likely
to do better academically, to participate in extra-curricular activities and to enjoy school
(DENI 2008)
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System level approaches to raising standards focus on early intervention and the
early years gaining more recognition in the school
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Early intervention focuses on the parents’ involvement in education alongside the role of
the school in the foundation stage
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Potential reasons such as differences in learning styles, attitudes
towards learning, teaching factors, the curriculum and socio-economic influences could
potentially all contribute to the problem of underachievement in boys’
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3
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Information for educational research can
be gathered in a number of ways and each method can have strengths or weaknesses
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Bearing these thoughts in mind
the most appropriate research method must be suited to the study that is being
undertaken
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The methods that were used are highlighted below:
1
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The school vice-principal, the school
special needs co-ordinator (SENCO) and a class teacher at Key Stage Two level
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2
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3
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3
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These guidelines
are an adaptation of the Revised Ethical Guidelines for Ethical Research designed by BERA
(British Educational Research Association 2006)
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After getting the go-ahead an informed
consent form was created detailing the aim and objectives of the research and the manner
in which the research would be undertaken (see Appendix A)
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3
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g
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The school principal
delegated the vice-principal to oversee the research as his role in the school was more
prevalent in raising the standards of boys’ in the school
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The work of Boster & Johnson
(1989) is cited by Schensul, Schensul & LeCompte (1999) when they state;
“Explorary research, which includes semistructured interviewing, provides the basis for
survey and other forms of explanatory research that can test theoretical hunches or
propositions”
The questions that were asked in these interviews were open-ended to allow greater depth
of response and in order to eliminate bias the same core questions were asked to each of
the three interviewees, however as stated above the nature of the semi-structured
interview allowed further questioning
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Conducting a semi-structured interview with staff of this particular school meant that the
researcher could focus specifically on talking to professionals who deal with this issue every
day in a working environment
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This can be backed up by Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2007)
when they state, “What people think they do and what they actually do can often be two
completely different things”
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3 Focus groups
A small focus group was conducted with five teachers who had qualified within the past ten
years
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The advantages of a focus group can be numerous “focus groups allow researchers to
capture subjective comments and evaluate them” (Edmunds 1999)
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“recruiting focus groups can be difficult,
depending on the definition of qualified participants” (Edmunds 1999)

3
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Denscombe (1998) states that empirical data based
on documents can incorporate as wide and as inclusive data as possible
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Whilst there are undoubtedly many positives of studying standardised scores there are a
few drawbacks to its nature
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4
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4
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This teacher taught in the Key Stage Two (KS2) sector of the school
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2 Male Underachievement
My first protocol was to determine firstly if the boys’ in this school were underachieving and
from this information I sought the main reasons for this from interviewing three people
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4
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1 Attitude towards school and Behavioural Issues
This was the key issue identified from the interview process
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This idea was
backed up by the KS2 teacher when he said that it was harder to keep some of the boys’ in
the class focused on the lesson content for more than twenty minutes at a time
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He stated that ‘caring masculinity’ was not in the nature of most of
the boys’ and the ‘macho image’ often prevailed with reluctance to begin work or sustain
concentration
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This supported by Powney (1996) stating that girls’ have a more positive
attitude towards school than boys’
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Their attitude

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towards school changed for the better during more practical and competitive subjects
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Behaviour is an area which closely relates to the attitude of the boys’
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The reason for this was that the practical
nature of topic-teaching had engaged the boys’ into performing better in class
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An interesting perspective on behaviour
from the VP was that the behaviour during school stems directly from behaviour at home
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4
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2 Male Role Models
This was another key area identified in the interview process
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The SENCO noted that one-parent, female families
were “bad news” for the boys’ as there is no male to look up to
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Alongside the absence of a father
figure this school had no male teachers teaching foundation or nursery
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This is consistent with the views of Beresford (2000)
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2
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The VP stated that
“often the underperformance of boys’ in a classroom context is overlooked as it can be
perceived as the norm”
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The SENCO of the school
indicated that “boys’ are more likely to struggle with literacy than all other subjects in the
Revised Curriculum” and this was backed up by the Vice-Principal “I suspect that Literacy is
the main downfall of young boys’ in this school”
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“Literacy is the subject where boys’ continue to underperform; this
has a knock-on effect on other subjects like numeracy, when the questions become
worded”
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In addition,
the KS2 teachers states that “girls’ are keen to impress teachers, whereas boys’ are keen to
impress their friends” leading to different attitudes
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I will outline these scores and discuss the results
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Average

Male
80
96
81
82
82
89
84
76
117
78
92
75
90
82
85
85
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Male
84
92
84
77
70
78
77
72
91
75
88
84
77
88
104
82
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Figure 1
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As there were more boys’ in the class than girls’ I
decided not to compare the raw scores and instead preferred consulting the standardised
scores
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From the average scores we can clearly see that the children in this particular class
were underachieving in general, considering that an “average” score for all children is
between 89 and 111 in both of the test, according to Clausen-May et al
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Another observation from these results is that the male average standardised score is not as
good as the female standardised score, which was view of the previous literature and
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follows the attainment levels of 05/06
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73 which is a difference of 4
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The boys’ numeracy
scores were are less than that the girls’ with a difference of 3
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4
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I will highlight these
below:

4
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1
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Further to this it gives
the boys’ a meaning to associate themselves with school and in many cases raises the
performance overall in school
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The KS2 teacher
that I interviewed was the school Gaelic football coach
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This only applied for matches and not for training or inter-class
tournaments as the participation in sporting activity was seen a paramount
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A similar approach was adapted by the SENCO
for handball which he coached every morning before school
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4
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2 The Revised Curriculum
This was a key area discussed during the interviews
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The areas identified within this curriculum are as follows:
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ICT: The five E’s of ICT are promoted in all subjects in this school, as each class has their
own laptops
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PowerPoint presentation was one
example given by the KS2 teacher when he said “Boys’ perform better via practical
means…
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This view is backed up by Byrne and Sharpe, 2002
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The View of the SENCO was that this revised curriculum can “empower young
people to reach their potential”
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4
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3 Reading Programmes and Resources
A lot of money out of the school budget was spent in 2011 on updating the children’s
literature and classroom resources
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A full range of
Michael Morpurgo texts were made available for primarys five, six and seven
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Another
programme introduced for the younger age groups was the project X reading scheme
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Freedmon 2003, states that the best way to engage boys’ include discovering their
specific interests and aspirations
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4
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The pupil of the week
award was awarded on merit of good behaviour
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We aim to positively target boys’ for pupil of the week”
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The reward system was more on a class level than a whole school
level
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One
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model I observed was ‘pupil points’ where the pupils got reward points for different areas:
behaviour, effort and tidiness
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4
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Five teachers agreed to
attend to help my research all of which were female
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The data presented
below is data that I did not find through the interview process
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5
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The five teachers agreed that the reluctance of boys’ to get involved in
reading from a young age impacted on the ability of boys’ in the later stages of school
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One of the teachers believed that the poor performance in boys’ was
due to poor classroom behaviour and listening
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This was
called “Up for the Cup?” and the children scored goals for good behaviour and classwork
(relating to football)
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4
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2 Parental Involvement
An issue raised was that the underachievement of boys’ was potentially an underlying issue
of other greater issues such as the home-life of the child
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Another issue raised was that if there

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were on-going problems in the house then this might have a detrimental effect on the
attendance of the child but this was not specific to any gender
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5
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All five of the teachers agreed that it was harder to
motivate the boys’ into reading, but that it was getting easier with the new range of texts
available in the school
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One teacher mentioned that
there were not enough reading programmes to support the needs of all children to generate
the initial interest
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After determining that boys’ generally
underachieve in the primary school from my initial research, I designed three questions that
I hoped would help me ascertain if the underachievement was prevalent in 2012 in a local
Belfast primary school
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My main findings from each of these questions were that my results were consistent with
the findings of previous literature that boys’ were and are currently underperforming in
education compared to girls’
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Boys’ are underperforming in literacy and numeracy compared to
girls’, but the difference is most noticeable when it comes to literacy
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5
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If I was to carry out this research again I would widen the scale
of the research to a range of schools across Belfast in both the controlled and maintained
sectors
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I would also focus my research questions as I feel
the core areas of literacy and numeracy should have been given more recognition
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5
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Due to on-going commitments with my degree and
my studies it was hard to get a range of representative data to meet the needs of the
research questions
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Although I was granted time for the interview process I felt that if
I had been granted more time I could have enquired further into this research topic
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Bibliography
Arnot, M
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& Weiner, G
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Australian Department of Education, Science and Training (2002) The Use of Data to Support
Literacy and Numeracy in an Australian School
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Bryman, A
...

Bell, J
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A Guide for First-time Researchers in Education,
Health and Social Science, Berkshire, Open University Press
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(2000) Student perspectives on School Improvement
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Blaxter, L
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(2006, 3rd edition) How to Research, Berkshire, Open
University Press
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(2002) Using ICT in Primary Science Teaching
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CCEA (2007) The Revised Curriculum for Northern Ireland Primary, CCEA Publications
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Vappula, Hanna
...
Progress in Maths 7, Teachers
guide, nferNelson, London
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Manion, L
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(2007) Research Methods in Education, London,
Routledge
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Denscombe, M
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Dfes Publications (2007) Every Parent Matters, Department for Education and Skills
Edmunds, H
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Freedmon, B (2003) Boys’ and literacy: Why boys’? Which boys’? Why now? Paper
presented at the Annual
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Gallagher, Dr A
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Gentile, D
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, Lynch, P
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, Linder, J
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, & Walsh, D
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(2004)
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Journal of Adolescence, 27,
5-22
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Research Briefing on Boys’ and Underachievement from the TES
Leithwood, K
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, Sammons, P
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, & Hopkins, D
...

MacCallum, J
...
, & Palmer, D (2005) Mentoring as a context for developing
motivation, Australian Association for Research in Education Conference,Sydney, November
29, 2005
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& Power, Dr A
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Australian Government Department of Education,
Science and Training
Ofsted (2003) Boys’’ achievement in secondary schools
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Ofsted (2003a) Yes he can: schools where boys’ write well
...

Powney, J
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Glasgow: The Scottish
Council for Research in Education
Queen’s University Belfast (2001) A review of recent research into the Early Years Enriched
Curriculum'
Rowe, K
...
Background
paper of keynote address presented at the Teaching Boys’ Developing Fine Men Conference,
Brisbane, Australia, Aug 21-22,2000
...
, Schensul, J
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(1999) Essential Ethnographic Methods:
Observations, Interviews and Questionnaires, Oxford, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing
Group, Inc
...
, Hillyard, P
...
(2005) Poverty and Social Exclusion Project, Lone
parent Households in Northern Ireland
...
& Kipp, K
...

Younger, M, Warrington, M, & Williams, J
...
British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(3), pp
...


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1 Appendix A
INFORMED CONSENT FORM
You are invited to participate in a study of underachieving boys’ in the primary school
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If you decide to participate, I will ask for your cooperation in
detailing the reasons why boys’ underachieve in this school through a semi-structured
interview or focus group
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Any information that is obtained in connection with this study and that can be identified
with you will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your permission
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If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me
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co
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You will be offered a
copy of this form to keep
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Your signature indicates that
you have read the information provided above and have decided to participate
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____________________________________

______________________

Signature

Date

____________________________________

______________________

Signature of Witness (If appropriate)

Signature of Investigator

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3 Appendix C- St Mary’s Code of Practice Document

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