The numeracy strategy may have driven up standards in maths, but teaching boys at key stage 3 has always been a struggle. These are the year groups in which behaviour is often at its most challenging and energy levels are highest. While girls seem able to concentrate more and grapple with complex maths problems, boys respond best to bite-sized chunks, competition and variety.
One way to bring boys onside is to introduce a games element. The idea is that once pupils start enjoying a maths game, they can make links with other areas of maths and apply the same logic.
Passionate about maths and football, St Joseph's Academy, an all-boys Catholic comprehensive in Blackheath, south-east London, got its year 9 pupils to sign up online to the Schools' Fantasy Football League. With a notional £60m to spend on their dream teams, pupils could follow the progress of their team, player by player, as goal points were added up each week.
One of the pupils, Mason Riley-Kidney, thanks Arsenal striker Thierry Henri for giving his team the edge: "I scored 300 points last season, putting me 1,187th in the league." Mason is now in his top set for maths.
Maths teacher Eddie Olo-wusu feels it's boosted boys' confidence. "We run through the players and their transfer costs, and then the boys take their calculators out and put their teams together. It normally takes a lesson but the boys make rough calculations before going online."
St Joseph's has many Afro-Caribbean pupils, and the maths department says it has found strategies to motivate them. This year's key stage 3 SATs results show 54 % of pupils to be at level five or above - a figure that has been rising year on year. This June, Ofsted announced it was pulling the school out of special measures where it has lang-uished for 11 years.
Despite the school's success, motivating boys to excel in key subjects such as maths remains a major challenge. According to the final report of the DfES taskforce, Raising Boys' Achievement, published in May, single-sex teaching in mixed schools is used most often in subjects such as maths and English in years 9 or years 10-11. This strategy is popular with pupils but some observers question its effectiveness.
Good maths teaching is often about building pupils' confidence - ask John Murphy. It's is 11.20am on a Wednesday and Murphy's bottom maths set in year 9 burst into the room in boisterous fashion. The class settles down quickly as Murphy, head of the maths department, hands back their homework and explains that today they will be revising the language of probability. Murphy switches on an interactive whiteboard, which contains a simple linear scale from 0-1 where 0 indicates "impossible" and 1 means "certain".
Instead of insisting on silence, Murphy exploits the boys' restless mood by throwing out some challenges. "The probability of it raining today? What is it?" A series of answers come back almost immediately. Murphy continues: "What is the probability that Devon will do his homework tonight?" Laughter. It's an even chance.
"What else gives you an even chance? Heads or tails?" Rapidly exploiting the gambling theme, Murphy begins to look at the odds generated by dice. He flashes up a series of icons designed to accompany his graph. The lesson, which got off to a quick start, begins to consolidate some mathematical language and spellings as boys write up words like "probable", "impossible" and "certain" on the whiteboard. Words correspond to a linear progression. After five minutes' practice, Murphy shifts the activity on to some serious mathematics.
He clicks on the image of a pair of dice, which is then projected on to the board. Boys are invited to calculate the possible scores from throwing two dice. Murphy clicks on a number grid, enlarges it and moves it to the centre of the screen before firing off a sequence of short questions. "What are my chances of throwing two sixes?" he asks. A pupil immediately comes up with the answer - a one in 36 chance. "The odds of my throwing a double?" Boys are invited to the front in turn to demonstrate the probabilities by completing the permutations on a number grid.
After the lesson, Murphy draws out some conclusions. "The boys knew this was a relaxed lesson to revise what we'd learnt earlier in the term. With a group like this, I find the teacher is doing 80% of the talking." It may not be most teachers' idea of relaxation, but certainly the boys were fully engaged. What is Murphy's secret? "First you have to build their confidence," he says. "I say 'you can do this'. I also try to break the culture that cool lads don't do homework."
Setting homework, marking it and writing encouraging comments that can be read by parents appears to work. Discipline is also essential. "Be firm," Murphy advises. "Boys appreciate you laying down the law."
There is no shortage of good maths resources for teaching boys. Quick revision exercises and games work well because they have variety and do not demand sustained concentration. Murphy singles out Mathsworld.com and SamLearning.com as sites worth a visit.
In Sheffield's Yewlands community school, head of maths and assistant headteacher Jude Hatfield has found that separating boys from girls at key stage 3 has raised the attainment of both groups. Single-sex teaching in the key curriculum areas of maths, science and English was a policy that teachers and students both signed up to. After two years of segregation in maths, this year's SATs result was 62% level 5 - and no gender gap.
The school, which serves the city's deprived Parsons Cross estate, has partnered Notre Dame, a high-achieving secondary, to monitor the gender experiment. Placing the boys into smaller class sizes of around 20 was key to a dramatic rise in standards. "I think it's nonsense to suggest boys have a more kinaesthetic learning style," says Hatfield.
ICT made an important contribution. "Instant feedback is a big motivator - that and competition. We vary the pace of lessons and use a lot of timed activities and maths games. In the old days, we might have given out 20 maths calculations and taken a lot of time to explain the workings. With ICT, you can get the boys to read and digest the instructions on the program in their own time and apply it."
Meanwhile, in girls' maths lessons, the teachers have been able to use a more collaborative approach. Girls work in small groups designing maths teaching materials which they then present to the class.
Yewlands' maths department has designed its own resources booster lessons taken from the numeracy strategy and adapted for the interactive whiteboard. This could be algebra or percentages exercises based on an Excel spreadsheet.
The school harnesses pupil interests and, in key stage 3 science, one project is based on photographs taken on pupils' mobile phones mixed with sound from MP3 players. For maths games, Hatfield will often split the class in two to get a competition going. The spin-off is an improvement in soft skills. "Part of the skills boys are learning is how to organise themselves in teams without getting into a fight."
Sport is an important component in the competitive approach. "Our boys will sell their soul for snooker," says Hatfield. "We designed a game where, if you get a right answer, you pot a snooker ball. Boys can move up from red balls to coloured and the aim is to get a 147 break."
And in true Sheffield tradition the city's rival football clubs both offer catch-up maths. Yewlands boys get the chance to join Sheffield Wednesday's six-week maths challenge while United offers a visit to the players academy and a runaround on the pitch - now incorporated into the school's reward system for doing well in maths!
It's a battle of the sexes
Academics are divided about whether single-sex classes work. It's a pragmatic decision that schools must make for themselves. Molly Warrington, a senior lecturer in education at Cambridge University and part of the Raising Boys' Achievement taskforce says: "There's absolutely no point using segregation to focus on behaviour issues. Putting boys together will often make things worse. Try to picture the last lesson on a Friday afternoon."
Chris Comber, lecturer in education at Leicester University, has done research in raising boys' attainment and believes ICT needs to be used intelligently. He says: "Boys need shorter, more structured tasks with clear aims and objectives. But staff need to sign up to single-sex teaching."
The report, Raising Boys' Achievement, found that single-sex maths lessons worked best where pupils and staff were in agreement.
Yewlands' Jude Hatfield has been running single-sex maths classes in year 9 for the past two years. "When we first tried this idea, the girls were not in favour," Hatfield says. "They told us they were missing the boys. But by the end of the first term, we had their wholehearted support. They felt more relaxed and less threatened by competition."
In terms of resources, whiteboards with maths exercises worked well across both sexes, but in different ways. John Murphy describes the St Joseph's experience. "We break the lesson up into five- or 10-minute slots. With a whiteboard, you can erase instantly. You don't have to turn your back on the class and worry about what they are doing behind your back!
"Meanwhile, girls like to work collaboratively and demonstrate their skills to the class," says Hatfield. "ICT makes them less afraid of making mistakes."
