Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday, April three, twenty twenty five. It's tea day
Speaker 1: for the global economy, with exporters around the world waiting
Speaker 1: to find out who will be smashed by Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: sweeping tariffs. The Australian government is considering taking the fight
Speaker 1: to the World Trade Organization if Australian producers are on
Speaker 1: the receiving end. Another day, another candidate for Victoria's Chief
Speaker 1: Police Commissioner, the acting top cop, has declared he doesn't
Speaker 1: want the job, and now a former senior officer, Sir
Speaker 1: Ken Jones, has put his hand up. That's an exclusive
Speaker 1: live now at Beaustralian dot com dot au. What's going
Speaker 1: on with Boys? A new study shows boys slipping further
Speaker 1: behind in schools as debate about the mental health and
Speaker 1: online influences of boys dominates the culture. With Netflix's smash
Speaker 1: hit series Adolescens Today, how young men became the focal
Speaker 1: point of a society's anxieties.
Speaker 2: Netflix has made its hit series Adolescence free to watch
Speaker 2: for secondary schools in an effort to help pupils understand
Speaker 2: the impact of misogyny and the dangers are being radicalized.
Speaker 1: Online addresses the very real dangers of knife crime, misogyny
Speaker 1: and online content. Girls are now outpacing boys in the
Speaker 1: classroom and it's having long lasting effects, as the.
Speaker 3: Performance gap between boys and girls has widened nationally since
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Boys, they're the topic of the moment, are our sons, nephews,
Speaker 1: little brothers and grandkids. Okay, while the adult world is
Speaker 1: still distinctly male dominated, from earnings to representation in parliament
Speaker 1: to CEO jobs, there's a shift in the younger years,
Speaker 1: with reports showing boys and young men are falling behind
Speaker 1: girls and women at school, in universities and in early
Speaker 1: career earning potential. The latest evidence a report from Catholic
Speaker 1: Schools New South Wales showing boys are over represented in
Speaker 1: the lowest performing cohort.
Speaker 3: Australia has done such a great job in getting girls
Speaker 3: to succeed in those traditional boys subjects like maths, science, technology,
Speaker 3: those stem subjects. However, it has come at the expense
Speaker 3: of some boys.
Speaker 1: Natasha Beta is The Australian's Education editor.
Speaker 3: This study from the Catholic Schools New South Wales says
Speaker 3: that boys do worse in disruptive environments. So the classrooms
Speaker 3: rowdy and there are a lot of distractions. The boys
Speaker 3: are more easily distracted and their education suffers as a result.
Speaker 3: They're more likely to be top performers in STEM. However,
Speaker 3: they're as likely as girls to be the poorest performers
Speaker 3: in STEM. And what I think is the most worrying
Speaker 3: thing is that they are twice as likely as girls
Speaker 3: to score in the lowest performance bands in reading and writing. Now,
Speaker 3: that is fundamental to every part of your education. So
Speaker 3: if boys aren't learning to read and write really well
Speaker 3: in primary school, they are going to struggle in all
Speaker 3: other subjects. Another issue is that the curriculum has now
Speaker 3: been designed so that everything's sort of about an essay really,
Speaker 3: so even maths and engineering and technology. I'm surprised by
Speaker 3: how much of that is not sort of hands on
Speaker 3: experiments or doing equations under exam conditions. It's about writing
Speaker 3: an essay sometimes you know, thousands of words on a
Speaker 3: mathematical concept. Now that is something that inherently will advantage
Speaker 3: girls who are better at reading and writing, whereas boys
Speaker 3: might have much better skills at those perhaps logical or
Speaker 3: technological subjects. But there be being performance punished because they're
Speaker 3: being assessed on written examinations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's change happening in the way subjects are
Speaker 1: taught and in the expectations of students. But is there
Speaker 1: also something happening do you think with this generation of boys,
Speaker 1: who I guess are Generation Alpha.
Speaker 3: Look, I think part of the issue is that schooling
Speaker 3: in particular is a very feminized profession and boys need
Speaker 3: male role models. They need really good adult role models. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: a lot of them are finding them on the Internet.
Speaker 3: So the andrew Tates of the world, the conspiracy theorists,
Speaker 3: the misogynists.
Speaker 1: I think being a female would be a disaster.
Speaker 2: I mean, what do you really do You get a guy,
Speaker 2: you love your guy, Maybe you get some nice meals,
Speaker 2: you buy a handbag, you get pregnantly. There's no conquest,
Speaker 2: there's no domination.
Speaker 3: This is very worrying because boys weren't exposed to that
Speaker 3: in previous generations, because they would be exposed to their
Speaker 3: own family members, or their teachers or their footy coach,
Speaker 3: et cetera. There's a teaching method known as explicit instruction,
Speaker 3: which is essentially old school teaching methods, which really benefits
Speaker 3: boys in particular. Benefits all students, but particularly for boys.
Speaker 3: They thrive on having things explained to them very clearly,
Speaker 3: very sequentially, and then having the teacher let them practice
Speaker 3: getting immediate feedback.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of information here.
Speaker 1: Let's step through it slowly and make sure we digest
Speaker 1: everything properly.
Speaker 2: Part of the punt.
Speaker 1: You've got one hundred kilograms of potatoes which are nineteen
Speaker 1: to nine percent water. Now I've got a really great question.
Speaker 1: This is Eddie Woo, a New South Wales high school
Speaker 1: math teacher who puts his lessons on YouTube. He calls
Speaker 1: it Woo Tube and has nearly two million subscribers.
Speaker 4: Hold on a second.
Speaker 1: Wait, you're right, You're still not quite there yet. He's
Speaker 1: engaging style, credited with transforming the education of countless kids,
Speaker 1: is fun and effective because he's clearly the teacher. He's
Speaker 1: not asking the kids to work it all out for themselves.
Speaker 1: He's teaching them how to get to the answers. Some
Speaker 1: of you are there, but others of you are not,
Speaker 1: so I want to make sure we all get there together.
Speaker 2: Okay, they're left out.
Speaker 3: To dry and then this is very important for children's learning.
Speaker 3: It's something that the coalition. The federal opposition Education spokeswoman
Speaker 3: Senator Sarah Henderson is adamant that every school must be
Speaker 3: compelled to use explicit instruction. It is up to the
Speaker 3: states and territories to do this. It's slowly gaining traction.
Speaker 3: I think the dominant teaching method of the past couple
Speaker 3: of decades, which is choose your own adventure. Here's a problem,
Speaker 3: you go off and solve it on your own and
Speaker 3: ask any questions that you might have. That does not
Speaker 3: serve a lot of children, and particularly for boys, it's
Speaker 3: disadvantaging them.
Speaker 1: One of the things that has changed in schooling since
Speaker 1: say I was at school, maybe you were at school, Natasha,
Speaker 1: is that discipline has changed. So once upon a time
Speaker 1: it was corporal punishment, then it changed to being about exclusion.
Speaker 1: You know that if you did the wrong thing, you
Speaker 1: were sent out of the classroom, or maybe you were suspended.
Speaker 1: We hear teachers saying that they don't feel empowered to
Speaker 1: actually discipline kids anymore. Is that part of the picture
Speaker 1: with boys that perhaps they responded better to a much
Speaker 1: more binary form of classroom management.
Speaker 3: Look, I've just spoken to a principal who was telling
Speaker 3: me about the importance of structure, routine, boundaries, and consequences
Speaker 3: for boys even more than girls. And he is saying
Speaker 3: that they thrive in a structure when they know what
Speaker 3: they're supposed to do. They step over the line, there's
Speaker 3: a consequence. Nobody wants to bring back the cane or
Speaker 3: corporal punishment. I think they were horrible times. However, the
Speaker 3: pendulum has swung back the other way, and we have
Speaker 3: some very entitled parents out there who will automatically take
Speaker 3: the side of their child. They will threaten to sue
Speaker 3: teachers or schools. They will become physically violent, they'll punch
Speaker 3: teachers or principles. I think it is just shocking that
Speaker 3: they should be standing behind the teachers and giving the
Speaker 3: teachers the authority to manage classrooms. Another issue I think, though,
Speaker 3: is it inherently is with the curriculum that we have
Speaker 3: a curriculum that rewards sitting still and looking straightforward and
Speaker 3: being quiet the whole time. It doesn't reward doing things
Speaker 3: with your hands or asking Lots and lots of questions.
Speaker 1: Coming up. Are all boys schools doomed? And will education
Speaker 1: shift any votes at the federal election?
Speaker 4: Well, I'm an old boy. The school and my son
Speaker 4: is also an old boy, and the intention was always
Speaker 4: that i'd have a grandson, but I won't bringing to
Speaker 4: a co ed school.
Speaker 1: Last year, new students attending the prestigious Newington College in
Speaker 1: Sydney's Inn West were greeted by a throng of parents
Speaker 1: and old boys at the school's or Nate front gates.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't the welcoming committee. It was a protest. Basically,
Speaker 1: they've been setting the parents a lie for many years.
Speaker 1: The schools plan to go co ed by twenty thirty
Speaker 1: three prompted a backlash from alumni and parents, and it's
Speaker 1: even the subject of legal action. Stan Moore's Newington College
Speaker 1: is being sued in the Supreme Court after a student
Speaker 1: claimed it's violating its one hundred and fifty two year
Speaker 1: old trust by admitting female students. Newington's move to co
Speaker 1: education is a sign of the times. Are we going
Speaker 1: to lose something there? Natasha? Do you think if boys'
Speaker 1: schools essentially die out because boys' parents don't want the
Speaker 1: boys to be surrounded by only male influences, that we
Speaker 1: disadvantage some boys who might have done better in that environment.
Speaker 3: I think we need to be creative about this. I've
Speaker 3: spoken to schools that are co ed, but they will
Speaker 3: have girls only classes and boys owned classes. Now, I
Speaker 3: think that's brilliant that they can study in an academic
Speaker 3: environment that is a same sex environment, but they can
Speaker 3: mingle in the school yard. I do think that we
Speaker 3: live in a world that is co ed. It can
Speaker 3: be quite artificial to segregate boys and girls, and I
Speaker 3: do think that it's healthy to learn how to get
Speaker 3: on with the other sex.
Speaker 1: If there was one thing that schools could do better
Speaker 1: for boys, what would it be? Is it, for example,
Speaker 1: getting more male teachers back into classrooms.
Speaker 3: I think having more male teachers would be fantastic. I
Speaker 3: think also celebrating other things that boys are good at.
Speaker 3: We have too much emphasis on just the academic outcomes.
Speaker 3: I think we need to change our assessment methods AI.
Speaker 3: What is going to happen, and what is happening is
Speaker 3: kids are just cutting and pasting everything out of AI.
Speaker 3: That is not learning right. So if we can go
Speaker 3: back to more practical hands on learning, we have more
Speaker 3: tests where kids are doing things without calculators, etc. I'm
Speaker 3: very old fashioned this way. I do believe that human
Speaker 3: brains need to learn how to do things themselves.
Speaker 1: So what's the election arithmetic on this.
Speaker 3: Jason Clair, the federal Education Minister, has done some magnificent
Speaker 3: work in trying to fix teacher training programs, introducing phonics.
Speaker 3: He's put all of these targets into school funding agreements,
Speaker 3: so that schools have to have a phonics test and
Speaker 3: a numeracy test in near one. They have to have
Speaker 3: literacy coaches, they have to have small group tutoring, better
Speaker 3: mental health. It's the first time we've ever had in
Speaker 3: any targets tied to funding. Now, the Coalition agrees with
Speaker 3: all these things, but thinks that Labor has been too
Speaker 3: slow and too soft and too inefficient in imposing it.
Speaker 3: So they just plan to do the same thing, but
Speaker 3: on steroids.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So the other issue is funding. Labor is saying that
Speaker 3: the Coalition will cut funding. The Coalition is saying it
Speaker 3: will not cut funding. Labor is claiming that it's pumped
Speaker 3: all of this extra money through school agreements. However, that
Speaker 3: money was not in the federal budget. It's written in
Speaker 3: an invisible ink. So I think the debate will not
Speaker 3: be so much over money this time. It will be
Speaker 3: about the curriculum and about what parents see as a
Speaker 3: failure of systems to ensure that children are mastering basic
Speaker 3: skills and learning to think for themselves.
Speaker 1: There needs to be now is The Australian's Education Editor.
Speaker 1: You can read her exclusives and her analysis anytime at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au