DESPITE steady improvements in overall Primary Exit Profile (PEP) performance, Jamaica remains without a clear solution to the long-standing underachievement of boys in schools, prompting Education Transformation Oversight Committee (ETOC) Chairman Dr Adrian Stokes to warn that “a lot more” must be done to close a gender gap that continues to favour girls. Stokes issued the warning at ETOC’s quarterly press conference at The University of the West Indies’ Regional Headquarters last week. He argued that one of the country’s most persistent education challenges remains unresolved — boys continue to trail girls in key areas despite years of research into the problem.
This year’s mathematics results underscored the disparity. While 64.9 per cent of girls achieved the “proficient” level, compared with 57.2 per cent of boys, girls also edged boys at the highest achievement level, with 8.3 per cent classified as “highly proficient” compared with 7.7 per cent of boys. Boys, meanwhile, accounted for a larger share of students in the lower achievement categories.
Stokes said the gap could no longer be viewed as simply another statistic. “The girls continue to outperform the boys in statistically significant ways. The [Orlando] Patterson report highlights this issue, and indeed, all the entities that have taken a deep dive looking into the Jamaican education system — like the UNICEF report, the 2022 report — point out that Jamaica is one of the few places globally where girls outperform boys in mathematics, for example,” he said.
He noted that the Orlando Patterson-led education review had carefully examined the issue and identified several social and psychological factors affecting boys, but said Jamaica has yet to develop targeted interventions capable of reversing the trend. “The Patterson report argued that the root cause was not favouritism. It’s not like girls are being given some advantage, knowingly.
Rather, what the report highlights is that our boys, through social circumstances, or their abusive upbringing, cultural norms, but generally, let’s say, psychosocial issues that are putting our boys at a disadvantage... So the bottom line is, we have more work to do to find solutions that can close the gender performance gap,” he added. Although the Ministry of Education recently announced plans to establish a committee to examine how boys ar…
Summary from source