Kiwis lay claim to the world’s largest gender gaps
Actually, I’m not sure that’s true, according to chart A3.1 from the OECD. The Aussies nip them by a bit. But that’s what they’re claiming, according to this report from a New Zealand conference on boys. I know they’re worried the Aussies are ahead of them in finding a solution. (Maybe I should have traveled to New Zealand rather than Australia to research my book.)
At least they don’t have to worry about the United States getting ahead of them on solution path … we haven’t even started yet. And yet, according to the OECD, we’re right up there with the Kiwis.
From the TVNZ article:
The school holidays might have begun but the work has not stopped for a group of teachers from all around the world who have gathered in Hawke’s Bay for an international conference.
They are here to deal with one of New Zealand’s education systems most pressing problems, lifting boys’ academic achievement.
It comes as new research shows Kiwi boys are further behind girls than any other developed country.
Hundreds of international educators gathered at Lindisfarne College on Tuesday to learn how to best teach boys.
Last years NCEA results show the gap between boys and girls is widening.
In a mid decile Kiwi school only 45% of boys passed NCEA level three compared to nearly 62% of girls.
“Many boys find NCEA not as competitive and not as focused for them and the continual internal assessment is in fact a de-motivator for them,” says Joseph Drissen, a boys education expert.
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A recent OECD report shows Kiwi boys are further behind girls than any other developed country, especially with reading
“We don’t really read for leisure, we would rather do sport and stuff,” says a Lindisfarne student.
Foreign educators were giving teachers advice.
“There is a huge emphasis on active learning, getting up and making products, cooperating and doing things collectively in teams often competitively against other teams,” says Richard Hawley, author of Teaching Boys.
International experts who have come to the conference from all around the world say the latest research proves that boys do best in single sex schools.
Some say there is much more to boy’s education than the school they attend.
“We now recommend that you don’t necessarily start school at five, wait until your son is really ready to be doing pen and paper it might be five and a half or six,” says Steve Biddulph, author of Raising Boys.
How best to move into manhood will be the hot topic debated at the conference this week.
Tags: new zealand
July 7th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Reading this article, I get the feeling that the concern over boys in Australia and New Zealand may come from the feeling that they are losing a valuable and irreplaceable resource if they don’t improve the educational achievement, especially verbally, of their boys. In the United States, with a population of 300 million and a tradition of bringing in people from the outside for our intellectual prowess (look at Wernher Von Braun or the fact that something like 50% of technical PhD students are not United States citizens) I don’t think we have that same sense that this problem is a threat to the society as a whole.