Spectator letters: How schools fail boys, Jonathan Croall answers Keith Baxter, and why atheists should love the C of E

Why girls do better

Sir: Isabel Hardman notes that girls now outperform boys at every level in education (‘The descent of man’, 3 May), implying that this is a symptom of a wider cultural malaise.

In fact, boys lost their edge in 16+ exams in 1970, long before their advantages in other areas began to disappear. ‘Child-centred’ reforms were already well advanced when the infamous Plowden report was published in 1967, and informal practices such as ‘discovery learning’ and ‘whole language’ gave girls a decided edge. This was conclusively demonstrated in trials conducted between 1997 and 2005 by the Scottish Office. Children who were taught to read with a rigorous phonics programme outperformed controls by such a wide margin that New Labour was forced to abandon its vaunted National Literacy Strategy. But even more significantly, boys outperformed girls: they clearly thrived in a formal setting where learning objectives were clear and consistent.

Unfortunately, child-centred practices are so deeply engrained in our teacher-training industry that attempts to replicate the Scottish success in English schools have not been uniformly successful.