Are schools failing boys?
Let me preface this by saying that as a father, I care about how our education system will affect my son.
I have also taught thousands of students from prep through to university. Teaching is hard, and I’ve made many mistakes. But if you asked me to recall the negative experiences I’ve had with students — the kind serious enough to affect my sleep at night — the vast majority of them involved boys.
Maybe I'm biased, kind of like how girls are stereotypically closer to their dads and boys to their mums. But if you ask any teacher who’s taught both boys and girls, I’m fairly sure they’ll give you the same answer.
The way our schools work just doesn't seem to align well with how boys behave.
But let’s not rely purely on anecdotal evidence. I wanted to see what the data said.
The statistics
Rates of ADHD diagnosis
From early childhood, boys are diagnosed with ADHD several times as often as girls 1,2, even though ADHD isn't known to be associated with any sex-linked genes 3,4.
The same is true in Australia. The only study I could find that included data of children under 16 showed that in 2013-2014,
- boys aged 4-11 were twice as likely to suffer from ADHD as girls, and
- boys aged 12-17 were 3.5 times as likely to suffer from ADHD as girls, based on parent or carer report 5.
It seems natural that boys, who on average are more active 6, mature later 7, acquire language more slowly 8, have a smaller vocabulary 9, favour gross motor skills over fine motor skills 10, just to name a few differences, are not as suited to an environment that demands frequent and prolonged periods of attention and inaction.
From experience, the vast majority of such diagnoses are provoked by behaviour in a school setting or during school-related tasks (for example, not being able to sit still in class or focus on completing their homework).
In my humble and personal opinion, ADHD in children is over-diagnosed and that is in no small part due to the circumstances we have placed our children in.
