Boys v School
A new audio series featuring interviews with educators, researchers and working class boys.
There’s a pattern I’ve seen play out time and again.
A bright kid from the local estate starts first year with enthusiasm and shows real interest, ambition and ability. Like David – a 11 year old boy I knew, who wanted to be a teacher. Or Steven, a boy in my first year class who got top marks in Geography. But then, as time passes, something goes wrong.
Enthusiasm, interest and educational aspirations … they dwindle, then disappear. And the boy mentally checks out of school. He stops attending class – or else stops everyone else from attending to the lesson.
I remember sitting in our first floor office at Dreamscheme, and seeing lads walking the opposite way to school, sometime around 10.25am, like Jonah on his way to Joppa.
Of course, the lads were wrong for beaking off school. They do have to take responsibility for not taking school seriously. But it’s not all on them. The more I have explored this issue of why working class boys are disengaging from education, the more I’m convinced that the whole community has to take responsibility too. The reason? We haven’t been taking the boys seriously.
For the past 20 years the attainment gap between working-class teens and their more affluent peers has hovered between 25-30%.
The concerning thing is that we’ve been trying to solve this issue for the past 20 years. That’s two decades of politicians, reports, projects, funding rounds – yet no real shift. The same cycle, the same outcomes.
When you dig into the data, it’s always working class boys who are at the very bottom of the charts. They are the least likely group of pupils to attain basic GCSE qualifications or progress into further education. Look at the following table, for example. Only 40.3% of boys eligible for free school males achieved the benchmark for ‘achievement’.
I thought it was time to investigate the problem for myself.
So I packed my podcast mics into a box, wrote down all the questions I wanted answered, and hit the road.
Over the past six months, I have sat down to talk in depth with researchers like Professor Noel Purdy from the Centre for Research in Educational Underachievement, and Dr Andy Hamilton from the Taking Boys Seriously research project, as well as youth workers, pastors, and perhaps most importantly, two young men called Jay and Carl.
The result is a new audio series called Boys v School that weaves together stories, insights and practical ideas to help us take boys seriously so that boys, in turn, will take education seriously. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed making this. I hope you enjoy listening.
Boys v School premieres on Thursday 22nd May. Subscribe wherever your get your podcasts. I’d love you to follow along.