Single-sex lessons can boost boys

Mixed schools should consider dividing up pupils for single-sex lessons in an effort to close the growing gap between high-flying girls and under-achieving boys, headteachers said yesterday. The radical step is already being tried by some heads amid evidence that the classroom gender divide is widening as girls improve faster than their male classmates.

It is one of a range of strategies for raising boys' performance suggested in a handbook for schools, Can Boys Do Better?, published yesterday by the Secondary Heads Association.

Speaking on the first day of the SHA's conference in Torquay, the union's past president and co-author of the handbook, Peter Downes, said the lead held by girls was now so great that if more grammar schools were introduced, they would be populated almost exclusively by girls, while boys would dominate the secondary moderns.

The trend could have fundamental implications for Conservative manifesto pledges of a grammar school in every town where parents want one. The proposals have already been attacked by Labour as unfair, leading inexorably to a secondary modern on every corner. SHA is also opposed to any extension of selection without overall planning.

Girls already out-perform boys in every GCSE subject except double science, and generally outstrip them at A-level. Boys fell behind for a range of reasons, including their inability to concentrate for long periods, said Mr Downes, who retired as headteacher of Hitchingbrooke school in Cambridgeshire in 1995.

"A typical 13-year-old boy can concentrate for four or five minutes, while the girl can concentrate for 15 minutes. Boys prefer active learning, while girls are happy to work on projects alone," he said.

Once their attention has wandered, boys switched off in different ways. "Some just go quietly to sleep and go on quietly under-achieving, but others react by belting the boy next to them."

Moulsham High School, in Chelmsford, Essex, is one of several mixed comprehensives to try single-sex teaching. Boys and girls are taught separately for all subjects up to age 14, and for core subjects up to GCSE, though a sixth form is mixed.

The policy has improved performances for both boys and girls, the school believes, though the effect is hard to quantify.

At Hinchingbrooke school Mr Downes's proposal of single-sex teaching groups was rejected by staff, but boys-only assemblies and extra classroom help were introduced to boost boys' flagging performance.

Mr Downes said that though he personally supported single-sex groups where necessary, not all heads favoured the approach. Alternatives included monitoring pupils' progress more closely and targeting under-achieving boys earlier, and spreading the message that it was "cool to achieve".