Salient

Hooray for penises! Male educational success focus of new MoE website

By Samuel Sachdeva | 11 Aug, 2008

The Ministry of Education has announced the creation of a new website focusing on the success of boys in education, with the intent of narrowing the education gap between females and males.

The new website, called Success for Boys (http://success-for-boys.tki.org.nz/), is a collection of successful New Zealand examples of boys’ education programmes, in addition to a directory of Ministry of Education resources and recent international research on the subject.

According to Minister of Education Chris Carter, the website is intended to assist schools where boys are underperforming by providing information to help develop male-focused programmes.

Carter highlighted male literacy standards as a particular issue for primary and secondary schools, noting that “at age six, twice as many boys require reading recovery as girls… [while] at NCEA Level 3, girls’ achievement in literacy has surpassed boys, while in maths and science achievements levels are broadly the same.”

Carter emphasised the necessity to promote academic success to males as being as valuable as “sport or any other school activity,” both at school and in the home.

The website was launched in conjunction with a new Education Review Office report, ‘Boys’ Education: Good Practice in Secondary School’, which included case studies of ten New Zealand secondary schools “that are successfully engaging boys in education”.