FYI. Tom http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/02/05/1107476816220.html
The Age 7 February 2005 A boys' own adventure By Wendy Tuohy A strange phenomenon is sweeping prep. Wendy Tuohy asks, what's causing the boys' brigade. Ask any of the increasingly large group of Melbourne primary school principals introducing all-boy classes what has caused the need for it, and the top-of-the-head answer is almost always a slightly baffled - "Something in the water?" Around the leafy suburbs, the inner city and the bay, boys enrolled in early-year groups have sometimes outnumbered girls by as much as three to one, leaving principals such as Grace Conway with an interesting educational problem. "When I discussed it with staff, I first suggested it was the water," says Ms Conway, of Westgarth Primary School in Northcote, half jokingly. At Westgarth, the 2005 prep intake is so heavily weighted towards boys (they make up 75 per cent of the year-group), that Ms Conway, after consulting with staff and parents, decided to start a boys-only prep grade. She is among the latest in a long list of principals of co-educational state primary schools who have had to accommodate a blip in the gender balance, a phenomenon that has occurred with increasing regularity in some areas of Melbourne in the past five years. Victorian birth data for the past decade quashes the water theory: more boy babies are born each year but the difference between male and female births is nowhere near big enough to account for these fluctuations. The phenomenon appears to be more of a trend constructed by the educational decisions of parents. Although the State Government has no statistics on how many schools have adopted single-sex classes (which almost always means all-boy classes), it is well enough aware of the issue to have put to tender a project studying the impact of gender on classrooms, and on learning styles. The research will be completed this year, says Tony Cook, the general manager of the Department of Education and Training's student learning division, and the findings will influence Government education policy. The department regards it as every school's right to choose class styles it deems appropriate, but the new policy will aim to "support schools" and will examine whether a more "definitive program" for dealing with gender is necessary. "There are schools all over Australia that are exploring the issue about whether it's better to have groups of boys-only in relation to their particular learning styles," says Mr Cook. Apart from the issue of gender balance in classes - which is the main reason most schools nominate for starting boys-only grades - the question of whether boys, or girls, need classes specially tailored to their learning styles, and whether single-sex environments suit either better, are perennial hot potatoes. Some Australian educationists agree with international research that basically suggests boys and girls do learn differently, and boys need more activity-based learning. Many agree, though, that the suggestion single-sex education produces better results for girls is outdated (although in the race for enrolments, the suggestion that this is the case is still to be found in some marketing material for girls' schools). "It (the success of boys or girls in the classroom) has more to do with the quality of teaching and learning than any gender differences, the gender of the teachers, or the other students," says Dr Ken Rowe of the Australian Council for Education Research. He is one of several educationists who discount research suggesting boys or girls need special teaching and learning environments. Dr Rowe insists teacher quality is the vital determinant of any child's school success. Even so, "international fluffy research" suggesting boys need certain conditions and girls do better with others has produced "a kind of urban myth" among education-conscious parents, which is contributing to the changing face of primary schools. Dr Rowe insists girls "can handle with impunity" being in classes dominated on numbers by boys. Popular parenting books have led some parents of boys to believe they should be held back from school until they are as old as possible, but Dr Rowe strongly criticises the academic validity of such claims. He says well-trained teachers accommodate children's different developmental stages. There is no evidence to prove holding boys back is causing the imbalance of the number of boys in some schools' year groups (Elsternwick Primary, for example, had as few as five boys in one 19-strong prep class last year but this year started its first all-boys prep). But some principals say it might be a factor. At Malvern Primary School, the new principal, Richard Bennetts, says the trend to hold boys back for another year of four-year-old kinder or pre-prep may have contributed to the large number of boys in the school's year 2 group of 2004 (there are 69 boys, 31 girls). Equally, a move by girls' parents to use the many private girls' schools around Malvern that year may have contributed to the imbalance. Mr Bennetts, like other principals, has no definite answer about the cause. The school has one all-boy class and rotates boys through that and the mixed classes at the same year level. Mr Bennetts invited Dr Gaell Hildebrand of Monash University to talk to parents about gender ratios in classes, and to allay concerns. Dr Hildebrand, the university's associate dean of teaching, backed up Dr Rowe's assertion that girls did not suffer educationally or socially if they were in a boy-heavy class. She also agreed that there was no research showing any "huge, stable differences between girls or boys" in learning styles. The differences in learning styles within the same-sex groups are much more obvious than the differences in "attitudes, skills, learning preferences and learning styles" between the genders, she says. She also dismisses the idea that girls benefit from single-sex schooling while boys do better in co-ed environments, saying "there is no clear research data that states that's true; on social, or academic grounds". As for concerns that small groups of girls may be "swamped" in boy-dominated classes, Dr Hildebrand says it is accepted that so long as girls make up at least 30 per cent of the class, students of both genders, and teachers, feel the balance works. It is only if the number of girls drops to 15 per cent or less in a class that girls could develop the idea that they did not belong and could suffer as a result. But Dr Hildebrand says there are also problems to be avoided when separating any group of students for a special arrangement in a year group, as many schools have done with groups of boys. Children separated into an identifiably different group from peers "can develop a mentality that there's something different or special or unusual about us". This could have the effect of "creating the exact problem schools are trying to solve". The way to prevent this is to ensure children in single-sex classes mix with their co-ed class peers for some activities, such as sport, art or language, and to rotate students through the all-boys class, as schools already do. As for the gender imbalance in some year groups, Dr Hildebrand agrees with other academics who say tough competition for enrolments by private schools, especially girls' schools, is contributing. "Education has been turned into a marketable consumer product," she says. "In the end (private) schools are businesses and it's a competitive market. That marketing can create a demographic problem for some government schools, and the way for them to cope with that is critical mass (making sure there were at least 30 per cent girls in a class). "Another issue might be boys being held back at kinder." Dr Georgina Tsolidis, a senior lecturer in the faculty of education at Monash University, and a former State Government education policy adviser, also blames aggressive recruitment competition for girls in the private sector for the too-many boys phenomenon. "That (vigorous marketing or partially discounted fee offers) is becoming more common, and it is one reason (for the lack of girls in some primary schools)," Dr Tsolidis says. "This decades-old notion that girls' schools are good for girls is manifesting itself in a really interesting way." She says it is wrong to attribute a range of characteristics or special needs to any child just by virtue of their sex, and she believes "vertically integrated" or multi-age classes would be a better solution for schools faced with a gender imbalance rather than single-sex classes. However, parents are sometimes unenthusiastic about multi-age classes. Meanwhile, in the primary schools with a gender imbalance in one year or another, principals such as Merri Creek Primary's Dionne Wright are working hard to ensure schools do not suffer from the image of being boy-heavy, which may put parents of girls off. Three years ago, boys made up two-thirds of the Merri Creek prep intake, and since then Ms Wright and her team have been aware that the idea that it is a boy-heavy school could become "self-fulfilling". "We had a couple of years where the big question asked by prospective parents was about the boy/girl ratio. We did have more boys than girls five or six years ago (across the whole school) but now it has balanced out," she says. "(But) when a school gets a reputation of (having more of one sex), that becomes self-fulfilling. The parents of girls then don't want to send them to us because they think we've got more boys than girls. That (impression) was a real dilemma." The school has structured classes carefully so there are never less than one-third girls in a group, and it has worked hard to ensure prospective parents realise it has managed the issue. The children in the boy-heavy year, now going into year 3, have done well, she says. The good news for other schools facing a big influx of boys - or a year of vanishing girls - is that the Merri Creek girls in the boy-heavy year have stayed on at the school. ------------------------ Yahoo! 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