Boys Gender and Schooling > Are boys in trouble > Participation and performance data >

Literacy

Australian studies indicate that in each aspect of literacy - writing, reading, viewing, speaking and listening - the average girl outperforms the average boy. Nevertheless most boys and girls develop sound literacy skills at school and both sexes are represented at the extremes of achievement.

Gender differences are greater in writing and speaking (the expressive modes) than in reading, listening and viewing (the receptive modes).

Queensland literacy data drawn from Years 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 in recent years shows that:

in traditional literacies, boys as a group are more at risk than girls as a group
in computer literacies, girls under-participate and are more at risk than boys as a group
Indigenous girls and boys are significantly more at risk than most students
within each socioeconomic group, girls outperform boys, but both girls and boys from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are significantly more at risk than boys and girls from higher socioeconomic groups.

Impacts on literacy - year 3 new window 191k new window examines how gender and other factors combine to affect literacy performance by year 3.

The vast majority of students will successfully develop their literacy skills, but Australian research shows that those who don't are at increased risk of:

leaving school early
long-term unemployment
low paid and less skilled work
poor training and educational options
poor health, including depression
insecure housing
imprisonment
for men, greater risk of divorce, and
for women, exit from the workforce altogether.

A recent international OECD study, PISA 2000, which measured the skills of 15-year-olds in mostly industrialised countries, found that while Australian students' results were good to excellent, areas of concern included:

the link between socioeconomic background and achievement in reading
boys' over-representation at the lowest reading proficiency levels
the link between boys' attitudes towards reading and their reading achievement

Issues for schools - Lifting literacies has more information about boys and literacy.

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