In 2004, schools involved in BELS Stage Two focused on trialling effective approaches to addressing boys’ education, and establishing appropriate evaluation tools and methodologies to monitor the impact of these interventions. In 2005, BELS clusters implemented interventions across their clusters and measured their impact on their target group of boys.
The Final Report provides a detailed analysis and discussion of the key findings and experiences of the 350 project schools in stage two of the Boys’ Education Lighthouse Schools Programme.
The BELS programme followed almost a decade of public enquiries into issues associated with boys’ learning in Australian schools.
Research and public debate had identified the following key issues in relation to boys’ participation in schooling and their educational outcomes:
- there are more boys than girls identified as ‘at-risk’ in literacy. A lower proportion of boys are achieving the national literacy benchmarks compared to girls;
- recent studies had indicated that boys reported less positive experiences and enjoyment of schooling;
- other studies indicated that boys are less engaged in their schooling, more easily distracted and less motivated;
- behavioural issues, such as risk taking, are more likely to be associated with boys, and depression and suicide is more prevalent among boys than girls;
- the school retention rate for boys is lower than that for girls; and
- the gap between boys’ and girls’ tertiary entrance scores has widened over the past two decades.
While these issues are significant, research had also shown the need to be mindful of making generalisations about boys’ performance and viewing them as a homogeneous group.
The report contains a detailed presentation of:
- the findings arising from the activities undertaken and a synthesis of those findings;
- adopted approaches to boys’ education;
- boys’ educational outcomes achieved as a result of those activities; and
- individual case studies that are representative of the range of approaches to boys’ education.
The report found that the most effective general strategies for improving the educational outcomes of boys were:
1. focusing on specific sub-groups of boys rather than the whole population of boys in the school. In some cases, the specific sub-groups were the cohort at a specific year level, or boys who had been identified as struggling with their learning in specific subject areas, or boys who were disengaged from the mainstream of school life; and
2. using a multi-strategy approach that usually included:
a) activity-based learning, in which students focused on literacy, behaviour and social outcomes through hands-on ‘workshop’ programs with links to the real-world;
b) variations of mentoring and role modelling; and
c) enhancing the learning environment in normal classrooms.