Leading Article: The boy bother

The big question arising from Sir Peter Lampl's report on the aspirations of boys and girls is: how do we make academic work attractive to boys? The Sutton Trust has found that boys are becoming less interested than they were in going to university, and that they are depressingly cynical, believing that gaining access to higher education is more about knowing the right people than getting decent examination results.

It is vital that our society finds some way to engage boys. We could start by making the recruitment of men to primary school teaching a top priority.