Are Schools Biased Against Boys?
By Tom Grimwood 17th May 2026
Schools are biased against boys.
At least, that’s the claim you often see made online. To be fair, it isn’t entirely false.
Boys are excluded from school at higher rates than girls, perform consistently worse academically and are less likely to attend university.
The overwhelming majority of early years professionals and primary school teachers are women. Around a third of primary schools in England have no male teachers at all.
On their own, however, those statistics do not necessarily tell us why these differences exist.
Having more male teachers doesn’t necessarily result in greater performance in boys. And it needs pointing out that the differences are themselves uneven, with boys still outperforming girls in maths and (some) sciences and the size of these differences varying depending on region.
It is also worth asking what the narrative would be like if these statistics were reversed, and it were girls doing worse than boys and men who massively outnumbered women in the early years and primary schools.
I suspect we’d see a lot more people calling for more to be done to address the gaps.
I do also think that there are some aspects where schools ‘favour’ girls over boys – at least in the younger years.
Schools often reward traits that girls on average develop a little earlier than boys – language, emotional regulation or the ability to sit still.
These are only small averages but they are enough for a large number of boys to internalise the view that they are not as clever, not as well behaved, not as suited to school as the girls.
For too many boys, school is a place not where they are made to feel capable, valued and loved but a place that slowly drains away their self-esteem day by day.
These are some serious structural issues with schools.
And just because boys seem to struggle more openly with them, it does not mean that girls aren’t also struggling too.
I would argue that making simple changes to make school more accessible to boys – like allowing more movement and play in Key Stage 1 – would also benefit girls.
What we see in the Nordic countries, which are often held up as the most gender equal societies in the world, is that formal schooling does not begin fully until age 8, compared with age 5 in England.
Making simple changes to make school more accessible to boys would also benefit girls
I will never forget one parent telling me how her son spent hours trying and trying to win just once and spending many nights in tears because it was just so difficult.
One other thing I see suggested a lot is that schools should introduce more competition and competitive tasks to appeal to boys.
The argument is that boys would respond better to prove that they are the ‘best’ and it is something that I’m not sure is true. I fear it would backfire.
In my teaching career, my school did include plenty of competitions, particularly using the website Times Tables Rockstars.
Every week, we had a class competition to see which class could get the most points. The result was that a tiny minority of my class enjoyed battling it out to be the best that week, and the remainder of the class disengaged because they had no hope of catching up.
I will never forget one parent telling me how her son spent hours trying and trying to win just once and spending many nights in tears because it was just so difficult.
When he finally did win one week, he never played it seriously again. Once he had that proof that he could win, it had taken so much energy and time that he had had enough.
My concern is that too much competition often reinforces the very thing we should be helping boys move beyond: status hierarchies.
It teaches boys that success means “winning” rather than improving, contributing or developing mastery over time.
All we do by encouraging such competition is reinforce the idea that the way to be successful is to ‘win’ – and all we do is provide maybe one or two more domains where we build a new hierarchy where the boys can jostle for position.
In my classroom’s case, it was who could get the most points consistently on Times Tables Rockstars that week.
In that class, I taught a great number of children who were excellent at times tables and didn’t need to engage with the competition to feel secure in their self-esteem.
For some, they set a personal target for their average speed and took confidence from gradually getting faster and faster.
One girl in that class had a personal target to get as close to the world record as she possibly could – if not beat it.
She was certainly capable of dominating the class competition if she wanted to but she chose to stay out of it and focus on her own goals.
Too much competition often reinforces the very thing we should be helping boys move beyond: status hierarchies.
If we introduce more competitions, the danger is that these same boys see they can never win and so disengage even faster.
One thing I teach children when I coach them is this – comparison is the thief of joy. I touched on this in my first Insight.
When we seek to compare ourselves to others, we will always find ways in which we come up short. There’s nothing wrong with seeking to emulate those we admire, of course, but if we only look at the ways in which others are doing better, we can never appreciate how far we have come already.
Part of the problem with schools is that it is very easy to compare yourself with others all the time. And for many boys who notice they are behind from the very beginning, disengaging becomes easier than trying.
If we introduce more competitions, the danger is that these same boys see they can never win and so disengage even faster.
That is not to say that competitions are never appropriate. Competition is a part of life to a degree.
In domains like professional sport, competition is the very thing that makes it exhilarating and high quality. In the marketplace, competition pushes businesses to create better products and services.
It can work to spice up educational content too. School sports days are practically a national institution — and one that I love. They give children who are less academically inclined but are sportier a chance to experience success.
The problem is not necessarily competition itself but the assumption that introducing more competition will automatically improve outcomes for boys.
Careful design of competitive tasks as well as working with boys (and girls) to separate their sense of worth from competition results matters too.
If you’re a parent reading this, I imagine it’s all very interesting but doesn’t help much if your son is struggling in school right now, so here are some ways parents can help boys develop healthier confidence and engagement.
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Part of the challenge many boys face in school is that comparison becomes constant and public. Who is fastest? Who is smartest? Who is best at football? Who gets told off the most?For boys who begin to feel behind early on, disengaging can become emotionally safer than trying and failing publicly.
One of the healthiest things parents can do is encourage boys to compare themselves with who they were yesterday rather than with other children. Progress matters more than rankings. A child who improves from 2/10 to 6/10 has achieved something meaningful even if another child is still ahead.
That does not mean pretending differences do not exist. Children are not stupid; they know some people are naturally stronger in certain areas than others. The goal is not to remove competition entirely but to stop comparison becoming the foundation of self-worth.
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Many boys quietly absorb the message that being naturally talented is what gives them value. The trouble is that children who tie their identity to being “the best” often struggle emotionally when they eventually meet something difficult.
Praise effort, discipline, resilience and improvement more than raw outcomes. Instead of focusing only on the final grade or result, notice the revision they completed, the practice they put in or the courage it took to keep going when something felt difficult.
Confidence built on progress tends to last much longer than confidence built purely on winning.
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Not every child will feel successful in the classroom all the time. That is true for girls too, but many boys in particular seem to benefit from having spaces where they can experience competence without constant comparison or public ranking.
That might be sport, but it could equally be music, coding, martial arts, drama, art, mechanics, cooking, chess or simply helping with practical tasks at home.
The goal is not to make boys “special” but to ensure that their identity does not become trapped inside a single hierarchy where they constantly feel behind.
Children who feel capable somewhere often become more willing to persevere in the areas they find harder.
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One thing I have noticed repeatedly in schools is that some boys would rather disengage completely than risk looking foolish in front of others. Humiliation is a powerful force in childhood, especially within peer groups.
Children need opportunities to fail safely. That means environments where mistakes are treated as part of learning rather than as proof that somebody is stupid, weak or incapable.
Parents can help enormously here by modelling calm responses to mistakes themselves. Children learn a great deal from watching how adults react when things go wrong.
The aim is not to remove challenge from children’s lives but to teach them that setbacks can be survived, learned from and moved beyond.
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Competition can absolutely be motivating in the right context. Many boys genuinely enjoy it. The problem comes when competition becomes the primary tool used to engage boys or the primary way they learn to measure their worth.
Most boys do not actually need endless status contests. They need meaningful challenge, responsibility, humour, belonging and opportunities to feel useful and capable.
Often, the boys who thrive most are not necessarily the ones trying hardest to dominate others but the ones who feel secure enough in themselves to focus on growth rather than constantly proving their status.
Many parents already know much of this instinctively. The difficulty is that children, especially teenagers, do not always hear messages most clearly from the people who love them most.
One of the benefits of coaching is that it creates a different kind of space: somewhere children can talk openly about confidence, pressure, identity and self-worth with a trusted adult outside the family dynamic.
Sometimes, having another adult reinforce messages around growth, resilience and self-belief can help children begin to see themselves differently over time.
About the Author
Tom Grimwood is a children’s mindset coach and the founder of Identity Coaching. With over a decade of experience working in schools, he helps children develop confidence, resilience and self-awareness so they can face challenges and grow into the best version of themselves.
He needs to get over being beaten at Times Tables Rockstars speeds by children.
