Closing the Gender Gap? Issues of gender equity in English secondary schools

Issues of gender equity in English secondary schools over the last decade have been dominated by a concern with the “under-achievement” of boys, implicitly acknowledging the apparent success of strategies developed in schools in previous decades to improve equality of opportunity for girls. This paper presents evidence to challenge this interpretation of the debate, arguing that policy-makers need to engage more centrally with diversity and heterogeneity of gender constructions and take note of inclusivity of needs rather than framing strategy within essentialist structures. We argue here, through exemplification developed with teachers in English secondary schools over the period 2000–2004, that there is a need to revisit policy and practice frameworks in England, as in Australia, to reassert the needs of girls as well as boys and to develop gender-relational policies which acknowledge and value difference and which have at their core the transformation of traditional aspirations and expectations of education.