By Lucy Carroll
Sixteen years ago, when Paul Sheather arrived as principal of Balgowlah Boys High, the school was struggling to push enrolments above 380 students.
“The year I started, the local paper published a league table of HSC results of all northern beaches schools. We were last on the list,” he recalls. “We knew we were down. That kicked in that drive to improve, and once there’s that academic uplift, I believe everything else will come along.”
(From rear) Dan Atkinson, Cubby Evans and Kingston Ssekiranda at Balgowlah High. Credit: Nick Moir
Under Sheather’s leadership, the all-boys state school has experienced a remarkable turnaround, now famed for its HSC English results which put it among the top schools in the state. Enrolments tripled to about 1140 students.
“I believe boys learn slightly differently from girls. We set novels we know they will enjoy and teach writing in a highly structured way, opening them up to more sophisticated language,” he says.
Students take a 20-minute class each day on grammar, spelling and reading comprehension, while English teacher-turned-deputy principal Benjamin Seldon developed a program on effective sentence construction that runs across faculties.
“Boys’ organisation skills develop slower than girls’, so they need more structure, and that has to happen in discipline too,” says Sheather. “We have three school rules. Show respect for fellow students, do your work in class, and follow directions from the teacher. Simple, clear.”
A new research paper on boys’ education in Australia, released last week, shows boys were twice as likely as girls to be at the bottom of the class in writing and reading and more likely to fall behind in the leap from primary to high school.
The report by Catholic Schools NSW states that while gender gaps for literacy widened over time, a “noticeable increase occurred between years 5 and 7”, indicating primary to high school as the key stage when “boys as a group were most outpaced by girls”.
Despite the scale of the problem, the underperformance of boys has not been given appropriate policy attention, the paper argues, with the last parliamentary review into boys education, Boys: Getting it Right, in 2002.
“All school kids deserve the attention and resources needed to achieve their full potential, but a particular priority must go to those struggling academically, the proverbial ‘lower tail’ of performance,” the report said.
Balgowlah Boys High principal Paul Sheather with HSC students in 2023. The school is consistently among the top-performing.Credit: Nick Moir
“Boys are twice as likely as girls to score in the lowest performance bands in the literacy domains. Even in numeracy, where boys traditionally outperform girls on average, the lowest performers are equally likely to be boys,” it states.
It also notes that “Australia’s highly disruptive classrooms by world standards are more likely to disadvantage boys’ learning”.
At Marist College Eastwood, which has doubled its HSC success rate – or marks above 90 – in the past decade, principal Silvana Rossetti says the boys’ school focuses on building a sense of belonging at school.
“We have an alumni tutoring program, and we have former students come who are still really connected to the school and are such good role models.”
Principal Silvana Rosetti with students at Marist College Eastwood, which has doubled its HSC success rate over 10 years. Credit: Wolter Peeters
“Parent involvement is key, and keeping high engagement through middle years 9 and 10. With boys, it’s vital they don’t fly under the radar and fall behind. We use teaching techniques where all students need to actively participate in class,” Rossetti says.
At all-boys Patrician Brothers College Fairfield, the school uses an early intervention program in year 7 to identify students at risk of falling behind. “Kids these days are not avid readers, and reading comprehension is key to success in all areas,” principal Peter Wade says.
“Explicit teaching, highly active learning in class and encouraging boys to find their voice are some of the strategies which has led to far more engaged students and academic growth.”
Sheather believes there needs to be a broader national discussion about how to teach boys.
“We knew quickly after I started at Balgowlah in 2009 that self-directed, or discovery learning, wasn’t working and that it was particularly challenging for boys with disabilities or lower abilities. We went to the other end of the spectrum with explicit teaching, which makes classroom management easier too,” he says.
“Boys generally aren’t wide readers. We set texts like Lord of the Flies and Romeo and Juliet, which they really enjoy. Teachers have to be on top of their game, and there is real class discussion, everyone is involved.”
The report also notes the gap in reading enjoyment between year 4 boys and girls is wider in Australia than in other countries.
It also points to the importance of raising girls’ participation in STEM as an “important goal in its own right, but it need not come at the expense of equivalent efforts to help boys struggling in literacy”.
The number of male teachers in Australian schools is at a record low, the report notes, declining to 28.1 per cent from 33 per cent in 2001.
While Sheather believes there are certain advantages of single-sex schools, the teaching methods can be applied to co-ed and single-sex schools, and “children can flourish” in either environment.
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