Gender and Education

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Girls over recent years have consistently achieved better in school than boys. This may be due to a variety of skills that are thought to be more natural for girls eg organisation and communication skills which are useful in coursework elements. Also boys tend to be overly confident about their achievement and may not work as hard to achieve. This divide between girls and boys achievement is less obvious amongst the middle classes and is growing in distance amongst the working classes with working class white boys now thought to be the biggest underachievers in the UK.

Girls and boys experiences socially at school can also be very different. Boys are put under peer pressure to conform to the hegemonic masculinity relevant at that time ( currently it seems to still be heterosexual male however alternatives include homosexual, metrosexual, new lad/man). Kehily and Nayak (97) studied mainly working class boys aged 15-16 and found that they achieved status by having the ability to throw insults at each other - known at the time as 'cussing…

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