 While there are individual and inter-group differences, boys generally are not performing as well as girls on a range of educational achievement measures and on a range of broader social indicators. Boys in Australia are also less likely to finish school or attend higher education and are more likely to be excluded from school than girls.
Literacy Scores. In 2000, 3.4% fewer Year 3 boys and 4.4% fewer Year 5 boys achieved the national reading benchmarks than girls. 15.3% of Australian boys lack the literacy skills to benefit sufficiently from their education opportunities, compared with just 8.7% of girls. 69% of 15-year-old girls scored at or above the OECD mean in reading literacy tests, compared with 55.4% of males. While girls’ performance in literacy results has remained relatively stable over the past 25 years, overall, boys’ results have fallen to a significant degree.
Year 12 Scores. Girls are achieving higher average marks in the majority of subjects at Year 12, and the “gap” between boys’ and girls’ total marks has widened. In NSW, the difference between boys’ and girls’ average Tertiary Entrance Score rose from 0.6 marks in 1981 to 19.4 marks in 1996. In most States, boys and girls are fairly evenly represented among the top one or two percent of students in Year 12 overall results, but the majority of mid-level to upper performers are girls, while boys dominate the bottom performers.
School Engagement and Enjoyment. Boys are less engaged with their school and enjoy school less than girls. While male students are more likely to participate in extracurricular sports activities, female students are likely to participate to a greater extent in extracurricular activities than male students and in doing so increase their level of attachment to the school. Boys report less positive experiences of schooling than girls in terms of “enjoyment of school, perceived curriculum usefulness and teacher responsiveness”.
School Retention. For the past 25 years more girls than boys have completed schooling. In 2002, the apparent Year 12 school retention rate was just 69.8% for males, compared with 80.7% for females.
Higher Education. More girls than boys go on to study at higher education institutions. Males made up just 43.1% of domestic higher education students in Australia in 2002, compared with 45.9% in 1992.
Behavioural and Social Outcomes. Males make up an overwhelming proportion of students experiencing disciplinary problems and school exclusion. Teenage boys are more likely than teenage girls to be unemployed, be involved in a car crash, have problems with the law, experience alcohol and substance abuse or commit suicide. By fifteen years of age boys are three times more likely than girls to die from all causes combined - but especially from accidents, violence and suicide.
Gender Profile of Australian Teachers. The majority of teachers in both primary and secondary school are female, and the proportion of male teachers is declining. Between 1992 and 2002, the proportion of male school teachers (in full-time equivalent measure) in Australia declined from 25.8% to 20.9% in primary schools and from 49.4% to 44.9% in secondary schools. Females also make up the bulk of students enrolled in teacher pre-service education courses in Australia. In 2002, females were 77% of the 53,908 domestic students enrolled in initial teacher education courses. Across the nation, there are only 4,247 males who are training to be primary teachers, which is 18.8% of the total number of teachers in primary training – less than one in five. Just 3.3% of the 7,128 students enrolled in early childhood Teacher Education courses are male, while in secondary school Teacher Education courses, males make up just 5,255 – or 39.2% – of the total enrolments.
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 The men from Uncle making a difference in boys' lives
A mentoring project for boys with absent fathers is struggling to stay afloat, writes Saffron Howden. When Luke Chamberlain's father died suddenly of a heart attack while surfing near Byron Bay two years ago, the nine-year-old was left with his twin sisters and a loving mother. It wasn't enough. He needed a male guide: someone to take him hiking, camping and surfing; someone to talk about cars, movies, sport and girls.
An uncle was the obvious choice - and Uncle, a unique community group that for nearly 15 years has helped hundreds of boys with absent or fickle fathers find adult male mentors, provided just that. "There's a lot of boys growing up without father figures around; some of them are slack, some of them have left, some have gone off with other women," Uncle's chief executive, Mark Gasson, said. "[Uncle is] never a replacement for a dad, but it's someone in their life that they can call and say, 'I'm having this crisis."
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Special schools a fast track to prison
Boys are being segregated from the mainstream school system for behavioural and emotional disorders at about six times the rate of girls. A study by Macquarie University researchers has found a disturbing pattern suggesting specialist behaviour schools may act as a "school-to-prison pipeline", in which students do not return to mainstream classes but enter juvenile justice centres.
The proportion of boys in special classes rises as diagnosis of their condition becomes more subjective, with boys accounting for 85 per cent of students in special schools with behavioural and emotional disorders. The enrolment pattern for students with behaviour disorders in juvenile justice facilities mirrors the trend in special schools, with enrolments for boys rising steeply from 13 on.
Dr Graham said the similarities of the trend in behaviour disorders and juvenile justice involvement raised the question of whether behaviour schools "precipitate movement down a school-to-prison pipeline. Reports suggest that these kids are being sent into holding pens. They're becoming repositories for kids ... and once they go in, it appears a high proportion are not coming ... out. These are kids who are disengaging because they're not learning at the rate of their peers in the first school years."
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Boys face compulsory feminism programs in state schools across Victoria
Boys face compulsory feminism programs in state schools across Victoria in a major push to prevent violence against females. Possible classroom activities include students acting out scenes of sexual coercion after which students would suggest more appropriate behaviour. A VicHealth report for the state Education Department calls for teachers to be trained in gender, violence and sexual health issues so they would be comfortable discussing "taboo" issues.
It said feminist theories were best at explaining the link between gender power relations and violence against women, and must underpin the programs. But the authors of the "Respectful Relationships Education" report admitted there was considerable community hostility to feminism, even among teachers and students. Australian Family Association spokesman John Morrissey said boys were already getting feminised education due to the falling number of male teachers in schools. "I'm sceptical if boys will respond to it if it is dressed up in feminist language and ideology," he said. "Strident feminist propaganda won't wash with boys."
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School lessons to tackle domestic violence outlined (UK)
Every school pupil in England is to be taught that domestic violence against women and girls is unacceptable, as part of a new government strategy. Under the plans, from 2011 children will be taught from the age of five how to prevent violent relationships. And next year, two helplines will be set up to deal with sexual violence and stalking and harassment.
The charity Refuge has welcomed the move but parents' groups questioned the government's interference. Margaret Morrissey, of the Parents Outloud campaign group, said schools should focus on teaching children to read and write. "This political correctness is turning our children into confused mini-adults from the age of five to nine," she said.
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Music teacher jailed for student sex
A former Ballarat teacher will spend Christmas behind bars for having sex with two students. Michelle Lynn Dennis, 33, had sex with the boys, aged 14 and 17, while employed as a music teacher at Ballarat High School. The County Court at Ballarat heard that Dennis sent more than 1300 text messages to the students over a two-year period. She also sent one of the boys naked pictures of herself and invited one of his friends to have a threesome with them. Dennis pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual penetration of a child under supervision and one count of sexual penetration of a child under 16. She was convicted and sentenced to four years and three months' jail, with a minimum of two years and 10 months to serve.
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Where have South Australia's male teachers gone?
Fewer than one in five students studying teaching in the state's universities and TAFEs are male as the exodus of men from schools worsens. South Australian Tertiary Admissions Centre figures for 2009 show there are 152 males (or 19 per cent) and 650 females enrolled in teaching courses. This compares to a ratio of one male to four females only three years ago. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show there are 1923 more female teachers in SA than 10 years ago, compared with 138 fewer males.
Educators and academics are concerned the continuing decline of men in the profession will impact on children's personal development during their formative years, leaving students without male role models. The situation is most worrying in primary schools, with reports of as few as one male teacher for every 10 females in some schools. Teachers say men may be put off a career in education because of the "feminised workforce", perceptions of low pay and "maternal" duties, and social stigma arising from publicised child abuses by men in schools.
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 Single-sex classes work
During the 1990s psychologist and family therapist Steve Biddulph provoked an extensive debate about families and parenting with his controversial books and talks that re-evaluated how we raise and educate boys. Today Mr Biddulph stands by his original premise, that raising boys is unfortunately fraught with difficulty, especially when it comes to schooling, due a widespread lack of understanding of boys' psyche and the fact that they develop at different rates and in a different sequence to girls. 'Boys at five are still getting their big muscles to work and are not ready to sit still in a desk,' he said. 'They don't have the language skills that girls do either.' Mr Biddulph said there can be a difference of six to 12 months between the abilities of girls and boys. More emphasis on activity and play in the first year, and less on neat work and sitting still, he said, should be the objective.
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