gender | Schools Week

‘Cancel culture’, gender stereotypes and ‘extreme political stances’: What new DfE guidance says about RSE

New guidance on the teaching of relationships and sex education has been published by the Department for Education. The advice is meant to compliment statutory guidance on the subjects published by the government last year. Schools are supposed to start teaching the subjects this year, but were told they didn’t need to start in September […]

How do we improve diversity in the media without tokenism?

Every summer, Schools Week publishes a count of how many women vs men – and how many BAME contributors – have been represented in the publication’s expert articles, front pages and profile interviews over the school year. Here Cath Murray considers why representation is important, explains how Schools Week has worked to improve it, and presents this […]

The OECD’s PISA gender reporting reinforces unhelpful stereotypes

The OECD’s analysis of the gender gaps in education simply regurgitates centuries of educational bias, and it’s wrong, writes Markus Meier The PISA studies are received by the scientific community and the general public alike as a kind of educational verdict, distributing bragging and blaming rights. There has been a lot of criticism, sure, but […]

Primary MATs have the widest gender pay gap

Primary school academy trusts have the largest pay gaps between men and women according to new national data – and senior figures are pointing to the high numbers of female staff in low paid roles as the main reason. The government announced in April 2016 that academy trusts and schools with more than 250 workers […]

It’s time to beat the gender pay gap in schools!

Schools will soon all be obliged to publish the differences in what they pay men and women. Sameena Choudry explains why that gap must now be filled. Last October, Theresa May brought the gender pay gap back into prominence. She declared that tackling it is an absolute priority for the government and made it a […]

A-levels 2017: Exam boards consider additional gender category for results tables

Exam boards are consulting with charities on plans to include an extra gender category in the annual release of GCSE and A-level statistics. At present, the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) publishes grades in each subject broken down by males and females. In the future, however, the results could be recategorised to include young people […]

Plans for new engineering A-level to recruit more creative students are dropped

Proposals to develop a new engineering A-level have been dropped, Schools Week can reveal, as more A-levels bite the dust. Schools Week reported last year that the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) had submitted plans to develop a more creative engineering A-level to exam board Pearson, in an attempt to encourage more girls into undergraduate […]

Is race the elephant in the staffroom?

Men at the recent WomenEd conference admitted they were scared to talk about gender. Are white people just as scared to talk about race, asks Cath Murray This week, Jon Chaloner writes a column for us about last weekend’s WomenEd “unconference”. One keynote event featured men: the HeforShe panel. There were eight men at the […]