For decades, disadvantaged boys have been underperforming in the school system.

Data from the Department for Education shows that in 2023-24 just 24 per cent of boys who were eligible for free school meals (FSM) attained a grade 9-5 in GCSE maths, compared with 43 per cent of boys who were not.

Disadvantaged girls are also underperforming compared with their non-disadvantaged peers. But, says Laura Moore, secondary regional director at United Learning multi-academy trust, the data shows that since the pandemic “disadvantaged girls are making stronger rates of improvement than disadvantaged boys”.

This national trend is evident across United Learning’s 93 academies. It led Moore and her colleagues to ask, “How can we, as the largest multi-academy trust in the country, hold our hands up and do something about this?”

The result was a collaboration with Boys’ Impact, a network established in 2023 that aims to bring an evidence-based approach to addressing the gap in GCSE outcomes for boys who are eligible for FSM.

Now a year-long pilot project, which involved 206 boys at 17 United Learning schools across five different English regions and is based on research undertaken at Ulster University, has already shown signs of impact.

Improved attendance and more positive behaviour

Exactly what that impact looks like depends on the school - as each academy took a different approach to the work - but they all reported improved attendance, more positive behaviour and stronger family engagement.

At Montsaye Academy in Rothwell, Northamptonshire, 80 per cent of the participating boys showed improved attendance and 90 per cent demonstrated improved behaviour, with the boys reporting an increased motivation to pursue further education or apprenticeships.

Meanwhile, at Manchester Academy in inner-city Moss Side, there was a reduction in truancy, removals from lessons and suspensions, and improved punctuality. At the start of the project just 25 per cent of participants said they would recommend the school, but by the end this figure was 86 per cent.

These are promising statistics. How were they achieved?

“The programme was designed on a locality-based approach,” says Moore. This is why she thinks it is so powerful, she adds: “There isn’t a one-fit model. This is about us providing, from the central team, a scaffold of support and direction that enables it to be contextual.”

Listening to students

The programme was led by coordinators who worked with clusters of three to five schools. “They were provided with CPD around how to lead a team, how to strategise, how to ask the right questions,” Moore says.

First, each school analysed its own data on attainment, attendance and suspensions.

Then they chose their participants. Some schools chose to focus on key stage 4, while others worked with students from Years 7 to 11. Some had a group of 20 boys, while others developed a targeted approach for five or six students. And while headlines in the media often focus on the outcomes for white, working-class boys, this programme was about disadvantaged boys from all ethnic backgrounds.

The academies asked questions of these boys using a survey designed by the team behind Taking Boys Seriously, a research project that has been ongoing at Ulster University since 2006. The students were asked about how they felt about themselves, their place in school and their view of masculinity more widely.

Together, the quantitative data and the qualitative student responses provided each school with a bank of evidence from which it could identify its major challenges.

Taking Boys Seriously

The schools then looked to the Taking Boys Seriously principles (see box, below) - a set of 10 relational education principles that were trialled to positive effect in 22 schools across Northern Ireland in 2021-22 and were used again in this programme. The schools chose their principles depending on their challenges.

For example, Moore explains, “if we found that boys were overrepresented in internal suspension data, and they were saying within their surveys that they couldn’t understand why they were having to learn particular subjects, number seven, ‘Connect boys’ learning to their context’, might be for them”.

Another school recognised that boys’ behaviour incidents were more common towards female colleagues than male colleagues. That led it to principle number four: “Challenge and affirm masculine identities.”

Alex Blower, a research fellow at Arts University Bournemouth and the founder of Boys’ Impact, says the principles seem like “a lot of common sense. Of course we should value the voice of boys or demonstrate dignity and respect”.

But he says that for these principles to have a positive effect, they must be used intentionally, which can be difficult in a busy school setting. This is why the project put the principles front and centre.
Each school was encouraged to focus on three principles and to develop an explicit programme of support tied to these.

A relational educational approach

The most widely used approach was mentoring, which is “quite an easy one for schools to adopt”, Moore says. Some opted for a system where boys would check in with a key staff member at the start of every day.

In another school, something that arose in the surveys was the boys’ anxieties around their futures. They requested support around financial planning, and received a one-off session from an external provider.

Blower says that other intervention groups included therapeutic arts sessions, extracurricular visits and opportunities to be exposed to higher education. But, he adds, “the ‘what’ is not as important as the ‘how’”.

The focus on a relational educational approach - exemplified through the 10 principles - is what’s key, he says.

“There’s never going to be one intervention type that is a silver bullet. Rather, it’s the underlying conceptual approach and what that does to the feeling of belonging and the relationship young men have with staff.”

The second phase of the programme at United Learning began this autumn term, with the schools again taking different approaches - some continuing with the same group of boys and others extending their cohorts.

It ties into work that Boys’ Impact is doing more widely, with 16 impact hubs - local partnerships of school leaders, youth communities and third-sector organisations - nationwide.

Moore hopes the school-based programme piloted by United Learning will extend nationally, too, having invited policymakers, including from the DfE, to meet to discuss its expansion.

Giving boys hope for their futures

Blower says that the success of the pilot “points towards a significant potential” for this movement, which is not only about boys’ attainment but also about “their place in the world as young men”.

He adds that it’s a more pressing issue than ever, given the increasing number of “young men feeling isolated” and the prominence of influencers such as Andrew Tate, “who are acting in bad faith, online and on social media, capitalising on that sense of interpersonal and societal rejection”.

“What we haven’t been able to do is have a counter-narrative that is characterised by hope for the future. We haven’t got something equally clear, equally consistent, that we as educators can present as a possibility.”

With the early signs of positive outcomes from this programme, “it is fantastic to see that dial starting to shift”, Blower adds.

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