BIOLOGY TEST FOR BOYS

Strathclyde University:

http://www.strath.

ac.uk/visitor/ Stirling High School:

http://www.sol.

co.uk/forthvalley/ stirling-hs/ NoBODY could accuse Mick Jagger of not having done well for himself in life although he was a disruptive teenager at Dartford Grammar School.

Returning to his alma mater to open a #2 million performing arts studio last week Jagger said that his school days had not been the happiest of his life. He left the school in 1961 with seven O-levels and two A-levels, and went on to study at the London School of Economics, founding the Stones with childhood friend Keith Richards a year later. The rest is rock and roll history but at school, all these years ago, he confesses he could have done better. Despite a promising start Jagger said his school work deteriorated because of "music and girls".

Four decades on nothing much has changed, except perhaps that there are fewer grammar schools and less openings in the rock industry. There are thousands of parents in Scotland who would sum up their teenage sons' experience of secondary schooling in the same way as Jagger. Playstations, music, girls and gangs seem to curtail the school performance of teenage boys. The question is does it prevent them from succeeding?

According to the latest figures based on last year's Higher and Standard grade examinations, girls are outperforming boys in all subjects and in all areas.

The gender gap, which has been evident for some time, is widening, with girls doing better than their male classmates in 21 out of 34 Higher subjects. Boys came out better in only six, with the sexes even in the remaining seven subjects. Even in traditionally male dominated subjects, girls are stretching ahead, with 78% of those who sat Higher physics last year passing the exam, compared with 67% of boys.

Is there anything to get het up about? The gender gap has to be put in the context of an overall improvement in all school results and pupils themselves see nothing to worry about.

"Everyone's good at their own thing," says Chris Burke, one of a group of teenagers at Stirling High who are putting their heads together to try and shed some light on a question that has been burning since an analysis of last year's Higher and Standard grade exam results was published.

"One generation, all the girls will be good at doing schoolwork. The next generation, it will be the guys. It doesn't really matter."

Nikki McGurk, 14, thinks the papers should stop making such a big deal about boys being less bright than girls. "After all," she says, "that's going to put them down even more. They'll think, well if that's their attitude to us, why should we bother?"

That "girls concentrate more in class,"and "boys are too busy playing football," are two of their more predictable suggestions. Everyone, including the boys, agrees girls are more mature, and one of the theories bandied about last week - that girls are more suited to the small groupwork situations favoured increasingly in modern schooling - gets some back-up here.

"I think boys are more confident," says Brooke Reid, 14. "They can talk out in front of a big class, but I find that quite difficult. Girls talk better in a group."

In this small group, the girls seem happier than the boys to articulate their views. They have a clearer idea of their career plans - and know they have to work hard to get there. Even Ashleigh Kerr, who is still open-minded about her future, is making sure she covers all the odds: "I'm going to try and get good marks in all my subjects so I've got more choices."

"Everybody's doing better in school - if you talk in terms of exam results," says Professor John MacBeath of Strathclyde University's Quality in Education centre. "Girls, who were inhibited by parents, by their choice of subject and by the schools themselves have closed the gap and are overtaking boys but maybe we're worrying about the wrong things."

It's only a truism to say that girls are better behaved than boys but the academics note that females are more likely to go along with what elders and leading figures like teachers think. Boys have a more boisterous attitude and register their apathy and discontent through disruptive behaviour.

All-female classes, free from the disruption of boys have proved their value to some educationally, if not socially, although this is not a view echoed by Stirling High's headteacher, Greig Ingram. "If it's done for the sole purpose of improving examination results, that's the wrong motivation," he believes. "There are other aspects, such as socialisation in schools, which have to be taken into account. Relating to one another is an important part of education."

Yes, he confirms, the gender gap is present in Stirling High, a 900-strong school with a mixed roll, 30% of whom come from areas of deprivation. "There is a noticeable difference in Standard grade, but by Higher stage, it tends to level out. The only significant factor I can put my finger on is peer pressure, and boys seem to go through a phase where studying is just not cool."

The problem with boys and their education could start much earlier. Generally, girls start off in school being more articulate and communicative than their male primary friends. In maths the boys are ahead. While you could argue endlessly whether these are environmental or genetic differences what is clear is that the girls soon catch up in spatial and mathematical challenges but the boys do not overcome their reticence to communicate.

Douglas Osler, Scotland's senior chief inspector of schools, argues that the problems boys face in grasping the English curriculum in the primary stage - the five to 14 age group - may be holding them back when it comes to accessing other subjects.

"Girls seem to catch on to reading in Primary One much better than boys," he says. "That is crucial and gives them a head start. Early intervention aims to eradicate gender differences in reading by Primary Three, and I believe that is the key to the whole issue."

There are several theories, from the choice of reading materials to the lack of male teaching role models, to explain why boys don't learn so well. In the end most analysts blame boy culture - it's not cool to be seen to be good in school. If you're a boy you get more credit from your peers by aping a sub-Ali G character than carrying a Penguin Classic in your combat trousers pockets.

But an emphasis on exam performance results badly skews what we should be doing in our education system, argues MacBeath. "We should be looking at the whole range of achievements which will be important to pupils when they leave school," he says. "We are in danger of becoming obsessed with measurement at the expense of real learning."

The danger is that society creates so much parental and child anxiety around a results driven curriculum that learning becomes inhibited. In America - and in England and Wales with the emphasis on a national curriculum - the focus on results over achievements is more acute. Two decades ago the concept of childhood stress and depression were not on the map; now we live in an era where teenagers are not only pitched against each other for results but also recognise that their performance is being used as a measure of their school's status against other schools.

Honestly, how much of O grade Physics can you remember and, MacBeath adds, more importantly, how much of it did you understand? Why do we spend six years learning French in schools to emerge in adulthood with pidgin Franglais? And then why, in intensive learning situations, are we able to communicate in a foreign language in a matter of days or weeks? "We tend to test for things that we forget a week later at the expense of learning skills that will be valuable for the rest of our lives."

The answer, for MacBeath, is in motivation and in the structure of a lock-step curriculum which traps pupils into learning in stages which measure, year on year, learned performance.

"The real challenge in developing the curriculum is to find sophisticated tests to measure what we understand," says Macbeath.

The core skills of analysing, synthesising information, extracting and presenting it are not being taught in schools. "Deep learning is becoming a luxury and that is a worry," says MacBeath.

Moving from the high plains to the sharp end of the education delivery system you can find teachers and schools that agree with MacBeath's analysis but have to balance it with the requirements of delivering exam pass rates. "After all is said and done parents send their kids to school to get an education - we have to put an emphasis on achievement," says Kathleen Gibbons, headteacher at St Kentigerns in West Lothian.

Gibbons' problems with pupil underachievement is not confined to the boys. After four years in charge of the 1000-pupil comprehensive she still marks it as "could do better". But the school has devised clever methods to motivate children in learning and MacBeath thinks it has struck a balance between expecting results from pupils and encouraging them to learn.

"We're trying to change a culture, not just get a quick fix," explains Gibbons. "You have to go in deep to see why pupils are not achieving. It's not just about cramming for exams and we don't judge too much on academic achievement, it's the attitude towards learning that we think is important."

That said, the school has high expectations of its pupils but has enough room to allow them to fail, and it intervenes early on with preventative steps. This year teachers piloted a project which identified 23 boys studying at Standard grade who were clearly turned off by school, had poor attendance and bad attitude to learning.

"We know they're able to achieve but they were not interested in the school or themselves," says Gibbons. "We had to make them look at themselves and access what they could achieve."

The programme involved talks in the school from the Hibernian football club coach on the theme of success and failure and a visit to Ibrox - mostly to discuss success, we can assume. At the end of the project the pupils made a presentation to their parents on what they had learned and what they hoped to achieve, involving that other crucial element in academic success, the home environment. "Parents rightly expect the school to provide a good education but they have to be involved too," says Gibbons.

The school's homework club is well attended and in the first year half the time is spent, not on revising class work, but on teaching core skills - learning, thinking and team-building. In the second term, pupils are assigned hands on projects; building a clock was one, which helps problem-solving and team working. "The boys loved the hands on stuff and building the clocks helped build up their basic skills. It worked like a Trojan horse," says Gibbons. "The important thing to remember is that everyone can achieve something."

Girls are outperforming boys in all areas of the curriculum. But is an emphasis on exam results the right course? The real challenge for schools may lie in finding new ways to motivate pupils and measure their understanding The educational gulf that has long existed between the sexes is widening, with Scots girls doing better than their male classmates in 21 out of 34 Higher subjects.

The government is now awaiting the findings of a study into the gender gap, which aims to pinpoint factors which could help boys to catch up with girls.

Some schools are beginning to tackle the problem by motivating boys with lessons in success from the football grounds and classes on motivation and team-building.

Meanwhile, questions remain on whether we are becoming obsessed with exam performance at the expense of a real learning experience.

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