Educational Attainment of Boys

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sam Rushworth]

What a great example. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that.

I will speed through the rest of my speech, because I am conscious of time and the contributions of other people. We want young boys to go to university too. I declare an interest: I used to tutor for the Brilliant Club in schools in the north-east. That was about young people whose parents may not have gone to university and helping them to have that aspiration and realise what they could do.

On early years, as I said at the beginning, a lot of attainment is set before the age of five—we know that even by the age of five, boys are behind girls. This Government are doing some significant things that are important in that regard, including the Best Start family hubs, which were announced just this week. Those are about not just children, but parents being able to access support. As a parent myself, I know that I raised my seven-year-old son much better than I raised my 18-year-old son, because I made so many mistakes in knowing how to help him. Too often, I tried to use a carrot-and-stick approach and did not understand well enough how to help him to reflect on his behaviour, although they are both wonderful boys.

The free breakfast clubs initiative is about so much more than just breakfast. I recently visited Cockfield primary school in my constituency, where, since it was an early adopter of the scheme, attendance went from about 10 or 12 children to 60 children every morning. I met children who used to have difficulty being on time or who were regularly absent, and I was told how they are now coming and thriving. A wise headteacher there was using that scheme not just to feed the children, but to engage them in meaningful activities that help develop their social and emotional skills.

Before I was elected, I was a governor at Benfieldside primary school in County Durham, where we introduced a specialist social and emotional learning programme. That was about helping children to develop so-called 21st century skills, such as emotional self-regulation, recognising what they are feeling, self-awareness, social awareness, empathy and how to build healthy relationships. The teachers reported remarkable differences within a year of the programme’s introduction, and parents were coming in and saying, “Something is happening to my child, because they are so much calmer and better able to manage their behaviour.”

There are real opportunities for us to grasp this issue in the breakfast clubs, in free school meal provision and in the Best Start family hubs. This is about not just increased funding, but content. If I have one ask of the Minister today, it is to give 30 minutes of her time, either by herself or with officials, to meet with me and people I used to work with in this field who have developed these really useful tools that can be introduced in any classroom setting.

I believe we urgently need a national strategy for boys’ attainment that is cross-party, evidence-based and rooted in fairness. It should invest in teacher training that recognises gender bias and engages boys more effectively. It should embed social and emotional learning throughout the curriculum, especially in early years and transition stages. It should expand vocational and technical pathways, recognising different routes to success. It should promote leadership opportunities for boys in school life and, most importantly, ensure transparent, gender-disaggregated data to hold ourselves accountable nationally and locally.

This is a debate not just about attainment, but about dignity. It is about who we see and who we invest in. I do not want boys in Bishop Auckland, Bootle, Barry or Basingstoke to feel that the system has no place for them; I want them to feel seen, supported and believed in, because when we raise the floor for those who are struggling, we lift the whole classroom. Let us act with some of the clarity and courage we showed a generation ago for girls—our boys and our society deserve nothing less.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Chair of the Education Committee.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. Members will have noticed that time is ticking on, and I want to get as many people in as possible. I would therefore be grateful if Members could limit their remarks to around four minutes.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. There is an immediate three-minute time limit.

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[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

Today I will speak about how boys from more deprived backgrounds have fewer academic and non-academic skills, and how it is harming their ability to get decent jobs in the post-industrial era. This topic was the subject of my second PhD paper, and although I cannot force Members to read it, I can certainly force them all to listen today.

The puzzle that my paper addressed was why non-graduate men are finding it so hard to get jobs in the post-industrial economy. The employment rate for non-graduate men has fallen from about 90% in the 1970s to about 75% in 2020. The manufacturing jobs that they used to do have disappeared, but if employment rates have risen as they have, why can they not get jobs in the service sector? The answer—or at least part of the answer—is in the earliest years of young boys’ lives. By the age of five, the least-skilled boys have lower academic and non-academic skills than the least-skilled girls. That makes it hard for them to attain in school and to develop the perseverance and social skills that they need. The physical skills that were rewarded in the post-industrial economy lost out in the move to the service economy.

How do we fix this and ensure that young boys can get the jobs that they need in our economy? As my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) has pointed to, it is about the earliest years and even before birth. It is first about making their parents’ lives affordable. Less time for parents worrying about bills means more quality time with their kids, and more money in the pockets of parents means more psychological and material resources to invest in their children. Secondly, investing in high-quality early years education is probably the highest returning investment that any Government can make. Thirdly, we have to create good jobs for graduates and non-graduates to move into, for both men and women. Mass production manufacturing is not coming back, but we in government can create good non-graduate jobs in construction, healthcare and education. We must invest in our physical and social infrastructure to create the good jobs we need, where we need them.

Every person should be able to live a decent life, but as things stand, too many people cannot. There are many young men whose fathers left school and got decent jobs at the local factory, but those young men cannot do the same today. That disappointment turns to depression, anger and division. Rather than coming together, we are falling apart. Strength is found in each of us doing well—each of us doing so with a common purpose and connection. It is for us in this place, on this side, to build that nation.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Can I start by warmly congratulating the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) on securing this incredibly important debate and on his powerful and insightful opening speech? It behoves all of us to spend more time on this topic, so I am grateful that he has made me look into it more than I had previously. It goes without saying that our education system should enable every child to flourish, no matter their gender, needs or background, but as we have heard all too clearly already, for too long cohorts of boys have failed to thrive in our education system in the way that they should, with a widening attainment gap between boys and girls, particularly among white working-class boys.

We have heard the statistics already, and I note that many of them come from the excellent report by the Centre for Social Justice, but they bear repetition because they are so shocking. Where 75% of girls are school-ready, only 60% of boys are. In GCSE exams boys achieve on average half a grade lower than girls across every subject, and at A-level girls outperform boys by an average of over a grade and a half across their best three subjects. Too many boys are quite clearly failing to reach their potential at school, and this is having severe and long-lasting consequences for our society and the economy.

Since the pandemic alone, the number of young men aged 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training has increased by a staggering 40%. According to the Higher Education Policy Institute, men with no qualifications are nearly twice as likely as women with no qualifications to be unemployed, and if they are employed, they are more likely to work in hazardous, menial or stagnant roles. That makes men less likely to look after their mental and physical health, leading to higher rates of substance abuse, smoking and alcohol consumption, lower life expectancy, and much higher rates of imprisonment and death by suicide.

It is hardly surprising that so many boys feel hopeless. Some 41% of teenagers report that they have been taught that young men are a problem for society. Tim Page, service co-ordinator at Catch22, said:

“There is no trust or hope in the future, a young man from a disadvantaged background has no clear path towards making a future for themselves, the only options for hundreds of boys and young men I have worked with are crime or benefits.”

I think that should make us all stop and reflect.

Education is obviously vital in tackling this tragic and disturbing trend, not just to enable pupils to achieve good grades and a decent salary, but to inspire our children so that they grow up to do good and important things as part of a thriving community and society. I agree with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland; I think it probably is time for a gender-specific strategy looking at boys in particular, but as the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), pointed out, some of the wider systemic challenges facing our education system have a particular impact on boys. As the Government are considering a number of these issues, I think it would be worth looking at them through a gender-specific lens.

We need good teachers to stay in our boys’ lives and to guide and encourage them, whether on career options for the future or just as good role models, yet over the past 12 years more than 40,000 state school teachers left within one year of qualifying, and just 24% of the overall teaching workforce are male and 30% of primary schools have no male teacher at all. I was thinking about this last night, actually. Both my children are at primary school. One of them will leave in the next few weeks, and by far and away the teacher that she has talked about the most in her seven years there has been a male teacher. He has only been teaching her for a day a week in year 6, but all the kids love him and look up to him. I have never heard them speak about any other teacher in such a way. It is largely a female-dominated school, and it is wonderful to see such affection for a male teacher and such a role model for all the children, both girls and boys.

Many attribute the shortage of teachers—both male and female—to the conditions that teachers face and a lack of career progression. I believe that the presence of more male teachers would normalise learning as a suitable activity for men and boys and may especially help children who do not have positive male role models at home. However, as the Minister knows, schools are facing the impossible task of trying to find more money in their already squeezed budgets to cover underfunded national insurance increases and teacher pay rises. While the Government have promised to recruit 6,500 more teachers, I have yet to see how they will be able to achieve that.

Some of the hopelessness that many boys are experiencing also stems from inadequate mental health support. We know that boys are twice as likely as girls to be excluded from school. Sadly, exclusion and criminal activity are too often intimately related. Those who are excluded multiple times from school are more likely to have a younger age of first conviction.

Mental health researchers have noted that boys in emotional mental distress tend to use coping strategies that externalise into violence and destruction, while girls are more likely to internalise into self-harm and depression. We Liberal Democrats have long called for a dedicated qualified mental health practitioner to be placed in every primary and secondary school to help tackle mental health and behavioural concerns early. While I am glad that the Government are continuing to roll out mental health support teams in schools, I fear that those teams are really overstretched, because they are often shared between several primary and secondary schools, with perhaps half a day or a day a week of mental health practitioner time in each, meaning that children do not have consistent access five days a week to a trusted person to support them with their mental health. I hope the Minister will say something about how the roll-out can be sped up and those teams grown so that there is more coverage for each of our schools.

Of course, there is a big overlap between mental health provision and special educational needs and disability provision. Boys make up over 60% of those receiving special educational needs support and over 70% of those on education, health and care plans. Those receiving SEND support are more than twice as likely to be excluded as the average boy, and more than five times as likely to be excluded as the average girl. Too many children are being forced out of school due to a failure to provide the required support for them to learn.

I have heard time and again from parents and kinship carers who feel that they have been let down by the SEND system in this country and that they are having to try to educate their children with no support. That has very much driven up the number of children being home-schooled, so I hope the Minister will use this opportunity to assure parents and carers of children with SEND across the country that their rights will not be rolled back when the Government look to reform our broken SEND system. Families must be at the heart of these changes, so that all children can access the support they deserve. I urge the Minister to look at the five principles for SEND reform that the Liberal Democrats published yesterday.

Finally, seriously tackling the feeling of hopelessness among young boys means looking at the online world. We have seen from research that algorithms are feeding increasingly violent and misogynistic content towards boys. With 60% of children aged eight to 10 having a social media account, it is wrong that companies can profit from addictive and harmful algorithms. We need to start taking a health approach to online safety, with tighter regulation of the tech giants and by empowering and educating young people and the adults who care for them about the online world. Crucially, we need to provide alternative spaces and activities for young people, so that they are not always glued to a screen when they have spare time.

The Liberal Democrats want the digital age of consent raised, to end addictive algorithms and to stop companies trading on our children’s attention. I very much hope that the Government will not kowtow to Donald Trump and remove the digital services tax, but instead treble it, so that that money can be invested in improving our children’s wellbeing and mental health. I once again thank the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland for securing this important debate, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.