Interesting article. I'm looking forward to seeing changes to our assessment practices here in Queensland, though at the rate our policymakers move, I suspect I'll be retired before it happens. And my retirement is a long way off!

As an English teacher, I'm not able to comment directly on your observations about the science subjects, though I can safely say the removal of the dreaded EEI would be wonderful for all of us currently working in high schools. They completely miss their point:

1) If they aim to prepare students for the sciences at university, they fail. It's been a few years since I studied first-year biotech, but I certainly never completed any of the 40+ page behemoths our students are forced to churn out now. The simplicity of the experiments they complete do not justify the complexity of the write-ups that are demanded of them.

2) If they aim to assess communication, they still fail. They may even do damage elsewhere. I have looked over A-quality EEIs that are barely comprehensible. It's not the language they use - it's the ridiculous way in which they use it. It's the mock-complexity of their compound sentence after compound sentence after sentence fragment that they pass off as 'scientific expression' that is the problem. If they get away with it - indeed, are praised for it - in Chemistry, of course they're going to use the same strategies in English and any humanities they may study.

Additionally, students are so busy doing their EEIs until 2 in the morning that they scarcely have time for any other subjects. Their Physics results may be wonderful, but their shortcomings become painfully obvious elsewhere.

Not only do I agree with you that the assignments in Maths and the sciences are redundant, but I'd also like to suggest a return to numbers-based grades - rather than the current criteria-based assessment - in those areas. There are no shades of grey in maths, and very few in science, so there is no problem with numbers which, ultimately, paint the clearest and most objective picture of student ability.

What is the rate of the International Baccalaureate in Queensland, it is a well recognised, non-hairy palm credential that is transferable everywhere? As to higher female degree rate it should be adjusted for their propensity to do Advanced Macrame studies or Marxism in a Female Perspective, nice and making for a well rounded person, but little more than a finishing school.

Great article, but I hold little hope of things improving in the short term.

I would add that the lack of competition and discipline has also had a hugely negative impact on boys. Boys have tons of energy which needs to be controlled and channelled into useful activities. Many boys thrive on competition and the threat of having their name 'written on the board' just doesn't cut for those boys who need a firmer hand.

40 years of constant devaluing and demonising of men by feminists has had an immensly negative impact on society. Many women refuse to recognise that men are important in boys lives and feel they can do the job themselves. Everything goes well until the boy reaches puberty and realises he is bigger than his mother and that there's nothing she can do to stop him doing what he wants. Meanwhile, the boy, having no male role model at home or at school, is left to his own devices to work out what it means to be a man. Sometimes it turns out okay, other times, not (refer to rates of male suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, incarceration and premature death).

You would think feminists would call that a pretty good victory but even our ardently feminist prime minister can't escape the victim mentality. She holds the highest office in the land but hasn't accepted responsibility for a single failure. Typical woman.

Getting back to the article. The other misapprehension I have is that you assume that because women say they want equality they want equality. That is very naive. When men run things that's called patriarchy but when women run things that's called equality (until things go wrong; then it's all men's fault).

The campaign to demonise male sexuality has been a huge success too. Males dare not go anywhere near a school now for fear of being cast as a predator. Radical feminsts have control of our most vulnerable citizens: our boys. And it is doing enormours damage to our society.

Peter Ridd

I was not disputing your facts, only the premise you have drawn from them, i.e. ‘… that presently we have statewide systematic sex discrimination on a huge scale.’

First, you provide incomplete statistics that show boys are getting higher grades on the QCST but don’t offer any reasons why. So the reader is left to assume that boys must be inherently brighter than girls. Frankly, I call that ‘sex discrimination’ of a different kind. Surely some defence of the female IQ was in order.

Then, you provide statistics to show how boys are underachieving on OP scores, but the only explanation you offer (other than ‘statewide systematic sex discrimination’) is the ‘over verbosity’ of assignment-based school assessment in Science and Maths. So again, the reader is left to assume that some kind of stereotypical gasbagging garrulousness inherent in the makeup of girls has given them the upper hand. (It’s a quick jump from there to that good old backlash argument that feminists have taken over the education sector and rigged the system to favour girls.)

I pointed out that the problem of OP underachievement does not happen with boys in same-sex schools, so that rules out the ‘verbosity’ argument. However, you ignored my point that co-ed schools are mainly government schools, which have a much higher proportion of students in isolated areas and from lower socio-economic backgrounds – both of which are well documented as being major contributors to underachievement in boys.

Godo,

Your single example of the relative prognostic value of methods for selecting candidates for undergraduate study is drawn from USA where the process is vastly different from any Australian jurisdiction.

You defend cherry picking by quoting from an ACER summary of the 2009 TIMMS, which addresses a snapshot of general Australian outcomes? Dr Ridds piece was about gender inequity in the QSA OP process and an ongoing decline in Queensland's academic standards particularly in Math and Science.

You might be wise to consider the generous advice give by eyejaw and at least look at the material referred to at the beginning of by Dr Ridd's commentary.

Or you might be wise to move onto another topic with a less demanding body of evidence
Dragons might not be a bad choice

"I pointed out that the problem of OP underachievement does not happen with boys in same-sex schools, so that rules out the ‘verbosity’ argument. "

Perhaps because the external core knowledge test is used to moderate school grades/marks, boys in single-sex schools who do well as a cohort in the external exam have their lower-than-girl-school grades moderated upwards by their better core test performance. The problem is masked.

In the co-ed situation girls grade better than boys, on average, and their OPs benefit.

To suggest there is a feminist plot here is far fetched but something is going on that is mitigating against boys and their temperament/nature. Are the changes brought to science education and assessment, that appear to have affected boys' performance, relevant to real world societal needs?

IMO, the influence of social science upon natural science is holding too much sway. It is post-modernism given too much head that is the problem. Science education needs to get back to its roots for boys to again excel in it. More science needs to be done than written about.

See http://rc10.overture.com/d/sr/?xargs=15KPjg1n5St5auwuf0L%5FiXEbqUkwwBl%2Du997pnCpd7a9JfgQZoVfYuPa7By%5FVIY%2D1kmwvSuIeRj9IXOqz2nv2UEwiNW1KBEf3%2D3onSnN8wdfz4DI8U0qNrl6j%5Fz9NDX2cOUl6VOsTvyOPNJcCoaHMZr91KkULHkrI7kI3lnfFPVLfQzgMg9l3CcMFQ2ZAR08Gbbd5JQK1KKoeH1H%5FNKdwVn4UkjrLmaT9XGTRe3l5j7QvCWQo56Zj9T8gE3eyk2I2OOKvwnc8PIkmS4qVu6T%2Dm%2DQ%2E%2E