Thanks Ben. William Collins wrote a book I recommend to people all the time, "The Empathy Gap: Male Disadvantages and the Mechanisms of Their Neglect" (2019). The paperback is 700+ pages long, the ebook just £4.32 on Amazon. In the chapter on education he has a graph on gendered educational attainment before and after O Levels were replaced with GCSEs in 1987/8 (I think that was the year). Contrary to popular opinion, boys and girls had been neck-and-neck on O Level grades for many years before 1987/8, but you're right, a gender education gap appeared in 1987/8 and has been with us ever since.

Collins cites in the book my FOI request to the Dept of Education some years ago, which forced the DoE to admit they had no plans to address the gap favouring girls. White working-class boys have long had the worst educational outcomes and the DoE doesn't even recognise that as a problem.

We covered the issue of education (along with 19 other issues) in our last and final election manifesto j4mb.org.uk/wp-content/… (pp.34-8) before we de-registered recently as a political party. The feminisation of the education profession has had an appalling impact on educational standards, every profession which has been feminised has gone down the pan in terms of delivery (medicine and policing being obvious examples).

Mike Buchanan

JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS

j4mb.org.uk