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Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Thursday, April three, twenty twenty five. It's tea day

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Speaker 1: for the global economy, with exporters around the world waiting

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Speaker 1: to find out who will be smashed by Donald Trump's

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Speaker 1: sweeping tariffs. The Australian government is considering taking the fight

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Speaker 1: to the World Trade Organization if Australian producers are on

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Speaker 1: the receiving end. Another day, another candidate for Victoria's Chief

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Speaker 1: Police Commissioner, the acting top cop, has declared he doesn't

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Speaker 1: want the job, and now a former senior officer, Sir

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Speaker 1: Ken Jones, has put his hand up. That's an exclusive

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Speaker 1: live now at Beaustralian dot com dot au. What's going

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Speaker 1: on with Boys? A new study shows boys slipping further

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Speaker 1: behind in schools as debate about the mental health and

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Speaker 1: online influences of boys dominates the culture. With Netflix's smash

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Speaker 1: hit series Adolescens Today, how young men became the focal

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Speaker 1: point of a society's anxieties.

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Speaker 2: Netflix has made its hit series Adolescence free to watch

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Speaker 2: for secondary schools in an effort to help pupils understand

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Speaker 2: the impact of misogyny and the dangers are being radicalized.

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Speaker 1: Online addresses the very real dangers of knife crime, misogyny

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Speaker 1: and online content. Girls are now outpacing boys in the

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Speaker 1: classroom and it's having long lasting effects, as the.

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Speaker 3: Performance gap between boys and girls has widened nationally since

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Speaker 3: twenty sixteen.

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Speaker 1: Boys, they're the topic of the moment, are our sons, nephews,

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Speaker 1: little brothers and grandkids. Okay, while the adult world is

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Speaker 1: still distinctly male dominated, from earnings to representation in parliament

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Speaker 1: to CEO jobs, there's a shift in the younger years,

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Speaker 1: with reports showing boys and young men are falling behind

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Speaker 1: girls and women at school, in universities and in early

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Speaker 1: career earning potential. The latest evidence a report from Catholic

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Speaker 1: Schools New South Wales showing boys are over represented in

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Speaker 1: the lowest performing cohort.

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Speaker 3: Australia has done such a great job in getting girls

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Speaker 3: to succeed in those traditional boys subjects like maths, science, technology,

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Speaker 3: those stem subjects. However, it has come at the expense

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Speaker 3: of some boys.

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Speaker 1: Natasha Beta is The Australian's Education editor.

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Speaker 3: This study from the Catholic Schools New South Wales says

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Speaker 3: that boys do worse in disruptive environments. So the classrooms

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Speaker 3: rowdy and there are a lot of distractions. The boys

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Speaker 3: are more easily distracted and their education suffers as a result.

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Speaker 3: They're more likely to be top performers in STEM. However,

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Speaker 3: they're as likely as girls to be the poorest performers

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Speaker 3: in STEM. And what I think is the most worrying

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Speaker 3: thing is that they are twice as likely as girls

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Speaker 3: to score in the lowest performance bands in reading and writing. Now,

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Speaker 3: that is fundamental to every part of your education. So

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Speaker 3: if boys aren't learning to read and write really well

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Speaker 3: in primary school, they are going to struggle in all

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Speaker 3: other subjects. Another issue is that the curriculum has now

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Speaker 3: been designed so that everything's sort of about an essay really,

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Speaker 3: so even maths and engineering and technology. I'm surprised by

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Speaker 3: how much of that is not sort of hands on

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Speaker 3: experiments or doing equations under exam conditions. It's about writing

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Speaker 3: an essay sometimes you know, thousands of words on a

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Speaker 3: mathematical concept. Now that is something that inherently will advantage

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Speaker 3: girls who are better at reading and writing, whereas boys

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Speaker 3: might have much better skills at those perhaps logical or

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Speaker 3: technological subjects. But there be being performance punished because they're

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Speaker 3: being assessed on written examinations.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's change happening in the way subjects are

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Speaker 1: taught and in the expectations of students. But is there

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Speaker 1: also something happening do you think with this generation of boys,

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Speaker 1: who I guess are Generation Alpha.

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Speaker 3: Look, I think part of the issue is that schooling

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Speaker 3: in particular is a very feminized profession and boys need

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Speaker 3: male role models. They need really good adult role models. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 3: a lot of them are finding them on the Internet.

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Speaker 3: So the andrew Tates of the world, the conspiracy theorists,

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Speaker 3: the misogynists.

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Speaker 1: I think being a female would be a disaster.

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Speaker 2: I mean, what do you really do You get a guy,

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Speaker 2: you love your guy, Maybe you get some nice meals,

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Speaker 2: you buy a handbag, you get pregnantly. There's no conquest,

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Speaker 2: there's no domination.

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Speaker 3: This is very worrying because boys weren't exposed to that

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Speaker 3: in previous generations, because they would be exposed to their

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Speaker 3: own family members, or their teachers or their footy coach,

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Speaker 3: et cetera. There's a teaching method known as explicit instruction,

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Speaker 3: which is essentially old school teaching methods, which really benefits

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Speaker 3: boys in particular. Benefits all students, but particularly for boys.

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Speaker 3: They thrive on having things explained to them very clearly,

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Speaker 3: very sequentially, and then having the teacher let them practice

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Speaker 3: getting immediate feedback.

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Speaker 2: There's a lot of information here.

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Speaker 1: Let's step through it slowly and make sure we digest

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Speaker 1: everything properly.

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Speaker 2: Part of the punt.

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Speaker 1: You've got one hundred kilograms of potatoes which are nineteen

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Speaker 1: to nine percent water. Now I've got a really great question.

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Speaker 1: This is Eddie Woo, a New South Wales high school

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Speaker 1: math teacher who puts his lessons on YouTube. He calls

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Speaker 1: it Woo Tube and has nearly two million subscribers.

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Speaker 4: Hold on a second.

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Speaker 1: Wait, you're right, You're still not quite there yet. He's

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Speaker 1: engaging style, credited with transforming the education of countless kids,

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Speaker 1: is fun and effective because he's clearly the teacher. He's

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Speaker 1: not asking the kids to work it all out for themselves.

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Speaker 1: He's teaching them how to get to the answers. Some

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Speaker 1: of you are there, but others of you are not,

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Speaker 1: so I want to make sure we all get there together.

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Speaker 2: Okay, they're left out.

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Speaker 3: To dry and then this is very important for children's learning.

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Speaker 3: It's something that the coalition. The federal opposition Education spokeswoman

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Speaker 3: Senator Sarah Henderson is adamant that every school must be

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Speaker 3: compelled to use explicit instruction. It is up to the

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Speaker 3: states and territories to do this. It's slowly gaining traction.

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Speaker 3: I think the dominant teaching method of the past couple

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Speaker 3: of decades, which is choose your own adventure. Here's a problem,

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Speaker 3: you go off and solve it on your own and

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Speaker 3: ask any questions that you might have. That does not

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Speaker 3: serve a lot of children, and particularly for boys, it's

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Speaker 3: disadvantaging them.

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Speaker 1: One of the things that has changed in schooling since

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Speaker 1: say I was at school, maybe you were at school, Natasha,

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Speaker 1: is that discipline has changed. So once upon a time

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Speaker 1: it was corporal punishment, then it changed to being about exclusion.

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Speaker 1: You know that if you did the wrong thing, you

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Speaker 1: were sent out of the classroom, or maybe you were suspended.

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Speaker 1: We hear teachers saying that they don't feel empowered to

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Speaker 1: actually discipline kids anymore. Is that part of the picture

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Speaker 1: with boys that perhaps they responded better to a much

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Speaker 1: more binary form of classroom management.

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Speaker 3: Look, I've just spoken to a principal who was telling

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Speaker 3: me about the importance of structure, routine, boundaries, and consequences

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Speaker 3: for boys even more than girls. And he is saying

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Speaker 3: that they thrive in a structure when they know what

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Speaker 3: they're supposed to do. They step over the line, there's

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Speaker 3: a consequence. Nobody wants to bring back the cane or

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Speaker 3: corporal punishment. I think they were horrible times. However, the

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Speaker 3: pendulum has swung back the other way, and we have

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Speaker 3: some very entitled parents out there who will automatically take

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Speaker 3: the side of their child. They will threaten to sue

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Speaker 3: teachers or schools. They will become physically violent, they'll punch

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Speaker 3: teachers or principles. I think it is just shocking that

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Speaker 3: they should be standing behind the teachers and giving the

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Speaker 3: teachers the authority to manage classrooms. Another issue I think, though,

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Speaker 3: is it inherently is with the curriculum that we have

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Speaker 3: a curriculum that rewards sitting still and looking straightforward and

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Speaker 3: being quiet the whole time. It doesn't reward doing things

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Speaker 3: with your hands or asking Lots and lots of questions.

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Speaker 1: Coming up. Are all boys schools doomed? And will education

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Speaker 1: shift any votes at the federal election?

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Speaker 4: Well, I'm an old boy. The school and my son

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Speaker 4: is also an old boy, and the intention was always

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Speaker 4: that i'd have a grandson, but I won't bringing to

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Speaker 4: a co ed school.

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Speaker 1: Last year, new students attending the prestigious Newington College in

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Speaker 1: Sydney's Inn West were greeted by a throng of parents

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Speaker 1: and old boys at the school's or Nate front gates.

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Speaker 1: But it wasn't the welcoming committee. It was a protest. Basically,

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Speaker 1: they've been setting the parents a lie for many years.

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Speaker 1: The schools plan to go co ed by twenty thirty

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Speaker 1: three prompted a backlash from alumni and parents, and it's

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Speaker 1: even the subject of legal action. Stan Moore's Newington College

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Speaker 1: is being sued in the Supreme Court after a student

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Speaker 1: claimed it's violating its one hundred and fifty two year

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Speaker 1: old trust by admitting female students. Newington's move to co

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Speaker 1: education is a sign of the times. Are we going

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Speaker 1: to lose something there? Natasha? Do you think if boys'

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Speaker 1: schools essentially die out because boys' parents don't want the

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Speaker 1: boys to be surrounded by only male influences, that we

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Speaker 1: disadvantage some boys who might have done better in that environment.

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Speaker 3: I think we need to be creative about this. I've

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Speaker 3: spoken to schools that are co ed, but they will

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Speaker 3: have girls only classes and boys owned classes. Now, I

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Speaker 3: think that's brilliant that they can study in an academic

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Speaker 3: environment that is a same sex environment, but they can

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Speaker 3: mingle in the school yard. I do think that we

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Speaker 3: live in a world that is co ed. It can

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Speaker 3: be quite artificial to segregate boys and girls, and I

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Speaker 3: do think that it's healthy to learn how to get

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Speaker 3: on with the other sex.

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Speaker 1: If there was one thing that schools could do better

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Speaker 1: for boys, what would it be? Is it, for example,

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Speaker 1: getting more male teachers back into classrooms.

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Speaker 3: I think having more male teachers would be fantastic. I

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Speaker 3: think also celebrating other things that boys are good at.

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Speaker 3: We have too much emphasis on just the academic outcomes.

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Speaker 3: I think we need to change our assessment methods AI.

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Speaker 3: What is going to happen, and what is happening is

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Speaker 3: kids are just cutting and pasting everything out of AI.

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Speaker 3: That is not learning right. So if we can go

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Speaker 3: back to more practical hands on learning, we have more

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Speaker 3: tests where kids are doing things without calculators, etc. I'm

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Speaker 3: very old fashioned this way. I do believe that human

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Speaker 3: brains need to learn how to do things themselves.

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Speaker 1: So what's the election arithmetic on this.

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Speaker 3: Jason Clair, the federal Education Minister, has done some magnificent

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Speaker 3: work in trying to fix teacher training programs, introducing phonics.

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Speaker 3: He's put all of these targets into school funding agreements,

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Speaker 3: so that schools have to have a phonics test and

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Speaker 3: a numeracy test in near one. They have to have

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Speaker 3: literacy coaches, they have to have small group tutoring, better

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Speaker 3: mental health. It's the first time we've ever had in

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Speaker 3: any targets tied to funding. Now, the Coalition agrees with

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Speaker 3: all these things, but thinks that Labor has been too

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Speaker 3: slow and too soft and too inefficient in imposing it.

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Speaker 3: So they just plan to do the same thing, but

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Speaker 3: on steroids.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 3: So the other issue is funding. Labor is saying that

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Speaker 3: the Coalition will cut funding. The Coalition is saying it

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Speaker 3: will not cut funding. Labor is claiming that it's pumped

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Speaker 3: all of this extra money through school agreements. However, that

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Speaker 3: money was not in the federal budget. It's written in

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Speaker 3: an invisible ink. So I think the debate will not

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Speaker 3: be so much over money this time. It will be

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Speaker 3: about the curriculum and about what parents see as a

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Speaker 3: failure of systems to ensure that children are mastering basic

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Speaker 3: skills and learning to think for themselves.

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Speaker 1: There needs to be now is The Australian's Education Editor.

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Speaker 1: You can read her exclusives and her analysis anytime at

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Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au