Educational Attainment of Boys

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Sam Rushworth

Thursday 10th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the attainment and engagement of boys in education.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, and I thank colleagues from across the House for their interest in what I believe is one of the most overlooked and consequential challenges of our time: the underachievement of boys at every stage of education. This debate is not about grievance—it is about evidence. I hope that today we can focus on the data, the consequences and the things that must change to do better by our boys, not instead of girls, but alongside them.

I am proud to have Cian and Alex, work experience students from my constituency of Bishop Auckland, with us in the Gallery this afternoon. Working alongside my parliamentary assistant, they have helped me to prepare for today’s debate with thoughtfulness, curiosity and maturity. I hope that their presence is a reminder of the promise that exists in young men in County Durham and beyond.

We cannot ignore the reality that too many of our boys are being left behind by a system that does not fully see them, expect much from them or equip them with the tools to thrive. Let us start with the facts: by key stage 2, only 57% of boys meet expected standards in reading, writing and maths, which is seven percentage points behind girls; when looking at the writing gap alone, boys are 13 percentage points behind girls; in their GCSE exams, boys, on average, achieve half a grade lower than girls across every subject; at A-level, girls outperform boys by an average of over a grade and half across their best three subjects; and girls are even pulling ahead in the new T-level qualification. Just 30.4% of 18-year-old boys went into higher education last year, compared with 42% of girls. Boys make up over 70% of permanent school exclusions and 95% of young people in custody.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Eight out of nine men in prison report that they were excluded from school. I was a secondary school teacher before I entered Parliament, and the attainment gap was a big worry, but my biggest worry was that we do not respond properly to or cater for people who are neurodiverse. About 20% of our young people, including girls, are different learners, but our curriculum does not really cater for them. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern?

[Sam Rushworth]

I do share that concern. We should have a debate about the way in which we address that issue, as well as about the issues facing young care leavers. The hon. Lady makes an excellent point about what the prison population looks like.

The issue is not just about adolescents, because the problem begins in early years. By the end of reception, just 60.7% of boys are assessed to be “school-ready”, compared with 75% of girls, a point that I will return to later. Where does it end? A quarter of a million young men, aged 16 to 24, are classed as NEETs—not in education, employment or training—which is 78% higher than the number for young women. That is a post-covid increase of 40% for young males, compared with an increase of just 7% for young females.

What is more, as the Centre for Social Justice reported recently:

“For those young men who are in work, the…gender pay gap has been reversed. Young men are now out-earned by their female peers, including among the university educated.”

This national challenge is especially acute in constituencies like mine, of Bishop Auckland, and across former coalfield communities in the north-east, where too often working-class boys start behind, and stay behind. I did not call the debate today merely to highlight an issue—I want it to lead to action and I am calling for real change. That begins with taking the issue seriously, because what concerns me most is not the data, but the absence of outrage and lack of urgency.

It was not always this way. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was girls who were lagging behind. The Government rightly took action to improve outcomes for girls, introducing targeted support, challenging curriculum bias, expanding grammar schools for girls and promoting girls’ access to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Those were not small tweaks, but deliberate strategic interventions, and they worked. Now that the situation is reversed, with boys persistently underachieving, where is the strategy? I am not talking about a general strategy to address deprivation or educational disadvantage, but a specific, evidence-based, deliverable strategy around boys and young men that addresses the gender-based aspects of underachievement.

At the foundation of that strategy must be a resolve to stop blaming boys and to start rebuilding their self-worth. There was a time in the 1970s when society did the same for girls. It became known as “the deficit approach” because it attributed girls’ underachievement, relative to boys, to a lack of effort or a deficiency in them, rather than the failures and limitations of the education system or prevalent socioeconomic trends. So-called “biological determinists” argued that gender differences were natural and unalterable, and, simply put, girls were not as bright. Thankfully, those nonsense theories have been well and truly debunked when it comes to girls, yet too often, when we talk about boys, the tone shifts to blame. It is as if boys’ underachievement is seen as self-inflicted, a product of laziness or of so-called “toxic masculinity”.