Boys Lag Behind Girls

Margaret Cook, a writer for The Age, writes that girls are better on timed tests and this favors them in the classroom.

Professors Stephen Camarata and Richard Woodcock from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, find that girls have a faster processing speed. Girls also seem to be more accurate.

Ian Lillico, a consultant for the Federal Government's $19.4 million Success for Boys initiative, states that boys have trouble with estimating how long something will take to complete. And, they do not do well in a sedentary setting--sitting in a desk all day. Lillico states, "Boys often overestimate the time required for an assignment and say, 'This will take forever' and then they don't attempt it because it looks too daunting, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Lillico also states, "Boys have difficulty setting time limits in exams - for example, spending too long on a question that is worth only three marks. This problem has got worse as exams have got longer."

Cook states that The American researchers say it is important to give boys material that is challenging and interesting, but "presented in smaller chunks without strict time limits".

Research on this topic was published by the International Society for Intelligence Research in its May-June journal, Intelligence. Boys in education is becoming a world-wide concern.

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