Hang on- so 21.9% of girls and 20.3% of boys are persistently absent in the UK! Whether girls are out performing boys or vice versa is like worrying about leaving the lights on when the house is burning down.
going by the report, ‘persistently absent’ was <90%, unless I read that incorrectly. With my data, I removed approved absences , so this is using only the unapproved absences where attendance was <90%.
Just changed the filter to <80%, that is showing 16% of our students o_O. Very difficult to teach a student if they are absent one day every week on average…
We are told it is similar to other schools deemed ‘similar’ to us by the department. I assume we would be classified as a low socioeconomic area on average. (I can check this).
We haven’t been able to recover our attendance data since COVID, there was a moderate improvement, but it really set the norm for a lot of families.
It definitely puts a lot of added pressure on teachers to find time to catch students up.
Thanks. I’ve read it now, and it comes across as much ado about very little. The gap between boys and girls is narrowing, but mainly because girls are performing slightly worse than they used to. It’s noted at the start that boys are doing less well overall, yet this isn’t treated as a real concern. To me, that seems like the issue that should be the focus of the expert handwringing.
Thanks, Aaron. The point of the post, of course, was the insanely skewed framing. But you are correct, that the graph suggests that this is all about not-much.
Could ot be that ‘dictatorial’ regimes doing something different at schools that drives girls forward? That is aside from the fact that the BBC has lost its way a long time ago.
I am skeptical of boys v. girls comparisons in education. These comparisons are simplistic. And they are simple to carry out. All you need is a spreadsheet with results in two columns and off you go. Such comparisons do not get to the bottom of understanding the key factors in learning.
Hang on- so 21.9% of girls and 20.3% of boys are persistently absent in the UK! Whether girls are out performing boys or vice versa is like worrying about leaving the lights on when the house is burning down.
Indeed.
We would not be far off those percentages in Australia, at least in public schools.
Really?
So actually worse, I just checked, my school is at ~28% persistently absent.
Jesus. What is the definition of persistently absent?
going by the report, ‘persistently absent’ was <90%, unless I read that incorrectly. With my data, I removed approved absences , so this is using only the unapproved absences where attendance was <90%.
Just changed the filter to <80%, that is showing 16% of our students o_O. Very difficult to teach a student if they are absent one day every week on average…
Geez. That’s ridiculous. Do you think that is typical for a public school?
We are told it is similar to other schools deemed ‘similar’ to us by the department. I assume we would be classified as a low socioeconomic area on average. (I can check this).
We haven’t been able to recover our attendance data since COVID, there was a moderate improvement, but it really set the norm for a lot of families.
It definitely puts a lot of added pressure on teachers to find time to catch students up.
FFS.
I should also add, I teach in a rural area, so this may make our data worse?? would be interesting to compare public schools in the city.
So, was the body of the report something like, “No, they’re not. See graph”?
Not exactly. The report is linked.
Thanks. I’ve read it now, and it comes across as much ado about very little. The gap between boys and girls is narrowing, but mainly because girls are performing slightly worse than they used to. It’s noted at the start that boys are doing less well overall, yet this isn’t treated as a real concern. To me, that seems like the issue that should be the focus of the expert handwringing.
Thanks, Aaron. The point of the post, of course, was the insanely skewed framing. But you are correct, that the graph suggests that this is all about not-much.
An interesting food for thought https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/02/the-more-gender-equality-the-fewer-women-in-stem/553592/
How is that relevant?
Could ot be that ‘dictatorial’ regimes doing something different at schools that drives girls forward? That is aside from the fact that the BBC has lost its way a long time ago.
Yeah yeah.
When comparing times series, there are statistical tests for parallelism which might be appropriate in this instance.
I doubt that any statistical test is gonna result in the girl graph ending up lower than the boy graph.
I am skeptical of boys v. girls comparisons in education. These comparisons are simplistic. And they are simple to carry out. All you need is a spreadsheet with results in two columns and off you go. Such comparisons do not get to the bottom of understanding the key factors in learning.
They also do not get to the point of this post, that reporters are forever putting their big fat thumbs on the scale.