In a nondescript office in Westminster, a junior civil servant scans the columns of a multicoloured spreadsheet. Noticing alarming swathes of red in one particular category, he picks up the phone and dials his boss’ number. At the same time, in the conference room of a Midlands comprehensive school, a group of senior leaders falls into silence under the blinking strip lights, having just listened to the data manager’s presentation on projected grades for the summer exam series.

And a dozen miles down the road, at a prestigious fee-paying school, a headteacher sits nursing a cup of tea in her study. Shaking her head, she reads the same list of names for her forthcoming Saturday morning homework detention.

For decades now, scenes like these have played out in classrooms, meeting rooms and offices across the country. And in each one of these environments, people are asking themselves the same question: “What do we do about the boys?”

We have long been aware of the need to close the gender attainment gap; to improve boys’ attitude towards school; to find new ways to engage boys who seemingly don’t work hard enough. But then the coronavirus pandemic happened - and that seems to have only made the problem worse.

A report from the National Foundation for Educational Research, based on a survey of teachers, found that 21 per cent of teachers reported that “boys have fallen further behind normal expectations than girls” during lockdown. Older boys, in particular, seem to have slipped back during the pandemic, with secondary teachers more likely to report that boys had fallen further behind than girls, compared with primary teachers.

The authors of the report go on to recommend that “targeted catch-up support may be required to ensure that gender gaps do not widen further”. The question is: what should that support look like?

The first thing to consider is whether what we have been doing to address this issue is working. Unfortunately, the answer is no.

We have long known that girls outperform boys across the world at primary, middle and secondary education. Current modelling indicates that a boy born in 2016 is 75 per cent less likely to attend university than a girl born in that same year. What’s more, in areas of the curriculum in which boys have traditionally outperformed girls, girls have now caught up or overtaken boys.

In England, for example, girls outperform boys in the majority of Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects, with 67 per cent of girls achieving 9-4 (A*-C) grades, compared with 63 per cent of boys. And even though boys are still ahead in the traditional male stronghold subjects of maths and physics, in those they now lead by just 1 percentage point.

We’ve thankfully made great progress in understanding the reason for this gap in attainment. Research suggests that peer pressure, teachers’ negative expectations and counterproductive “boys’ engagement strategies” (such as introducing competition into lessons) used in schools are just some of the factors that contribute to male academic underperformance.

But perhaps most important is the role of motivation. Anecdotally, teachers frequently tell me that in lessons, on the whole, girls are more willing than boys to embrace hard work and dedicate themselves to attaining the best possible grades. But does the evidence back up this belief? Are girls really more motivated to succeed in class?

In a 2013 study, German researchers Fischer et al explored why female secondary students do better than male students. They found that “females’ advantage in final secondary school grades…can be explained by [their] higher achievement motivation. Showing more compensatory effort, as well as self-control and taking more pride in their own productivity, helps females to outperform their male counterparts at secondary school”.

In other words, girls are generally less distracted than boys, are more driven to produce their best work and, in cases where they lack confidence in a subject, they put in more effort to make up for their perceived shortcomings - unlike boys, who tend to overestimate their abilities and produce less work as a result.

The findings of Fischer et al support previous studies that have shown that boys are more likely to overestimate and girls underestimate their academic competence.

In addition, research by Ablard and Lipschultz (1998) into the learning behaviours and attitudes of high prior-attaining seventh-grade (Year 8) students in the US found that girls were far more likely to use metacognitive strategies and remain motivated when faced with setbacks than boys, especially, when attempting “tasks that were particularly difficult or tasks that involved reading and writing”.

It’s clear, then, that a lot of what motivates girls does not motivate boys, so what does work for the latter?

A 2014 study of more than 400 Italian students, ranging from age 9 to 22, found that intrinsic motivation “tended to be stronger for females than for males across all educational levels”. Whereas girls are more likely to be driven by the belief that learning is an end in itself (intrinsic motivation), boys are more driven by “external regulation” or “a valued end” (extrinsic motivation). In other words, while girls might see the learning of coding as inherently worthwhile, boys are more likely only to be motivated if they see it as a necessary step towards a highly remunerated career in the IT sector.

The temptation, then, would be to appeal to extrinsic motivation more - a move many schools have made. Unfortunately, it does not work, as what drives a reliance on extrinsic motivation is poor self-efficacy (confidence in one’s ability), anxiety and lack of control. It is these factors that actually need to be addressed.

That’s not all. We know from Ablard’s and Lipschultz’s study, and several previous studies, that as well as lacking intrinsic motivation, boys were much more likely to set performance goals (goals focused on demonstrating ability) than mastery goals (goals focused on getting better at something). Research has shown that performance goals are less likely to lead to high-achievement outcomes than mastery goals so, again, the apparent “cure” for male underachievement is likely not to work.

So, what might work better? Having scrutinised the research, and observed lots of teachers who get the most out of their male students - combined with my own experience of teaching boys - there are certain areas that I believe are key to effective academic motivation.

Focus on subject-specific success

Usually, the poor motivation of low attainers is a response to repeated failure. Start getting them to succeed and their motivation and confidence should increase.

Instead of trying to “hook” boys into learning through games, active learning or sport, we need to get them to appreciate the inherent beauty and joy of our subject by helping them to do well in it.

But how do you get boys to be successful in your classroom when they’re switched off in the first place? Here are some pedagogical principles that I recommend to get unmotivated boys tasting success:

• Feed for fulfilment

I’ve found this highly effective in helping demotivated boys to feel like they can achieve in my subject (English). Here’s how it works: you set the class off on a challenging activity. While they are working on it, you circulate and go to the boys who are switched off or stuck.

Provide a verbal or written scaffold to help them come up with a good response. Depending on how stuck they are, this might involve a helpful prompt or you effectively giving them a complete answer.

When you revert back to whole-class teaching, you make sure you call on these boys. Hey presto, they provide a decent answer!

To some, this seems like cheating; you’re doing the work for them. But, actually, you have provided them with the necessary knowledge to succeed in this activity while also giving them a short-term sense of achievement that allows them to experience success in your subject. Over time, you’ll need to do this less frequently. These boys will start to work it out for themselves, but only because you’ve shown them how and made them feel like it’s something they can do well in your class.

• Rephrase to amaze

When you call on unenthusiastic boys during questioning, you’ll often get a fairly middling response. For example, if a teacher calls on Adnan to explain what happens when a volcano erupts, Adnan might respond with: “Well, Miss, the…er…the ash and rocks all fly out. Sometimes it’s little pieces and other times it’s large rocks.”

Adnan’s response is imprecise and lacking in technical terminology, but he’s on the right track. The teacher could probe deeper and would probably discover that Adnan couldn’t remember what we call the “things” that come out during eruptions. Or, she might ask another super-keen pupil, who knows everything about everything, to provide this additional information.

But, let’s say that, at this point, the class has done only a few lessons on volcanoes and the teacher wants to avoid making a further dent in Adnan’s view of himself as an embryonic geographer. So, she decides to “rephrase to amaze”. She says: “Yes, you’re right, Adnan. A volcanic eruption produces ash clouds, where small pieces of rock and glass are carried in the air. It also produces volcanic bombs - those larger bits of very hot rock that you mentioned.”

Without showering around empty praise, the teacher can make it seem like Adnan gave a fluent and confident answer. She also makes it sound like he actually used the term “volcanic bombs”. Over time, the teacher will make sure he does. But for now, he’s buzzing from having given such a good answer.

You can take this a stage further. In the next lesson, the teacher might refer to “those volcanic bombs that Adnan told us about yesterday”.

• Let them write like you

Sometimes, when teaching a group of boys who are really turned off by writing, you need to orchestrate opportunities for them to experience successful writing. An excellent way to do this is to get them to copy down a model answer, written by you.

To work well, this must be done live, with you verbalising your thoughts as you make decisions about vocabulary, syntax and paragraph structure.

You might argue that copying a whole paragraph down from the board is a waste of time. In most cases, I’d agree with you. But in this case, the time spent copying down your work is a valuable investment. Not only have the pupils had the benefit of listening to your expert thought processes, they’ve also been able to experience the satisfaction of writing something impressive in their book. This might well be a feeling that they’ve not encountered before. Yes, it’s your work, but they’ve channelled and begun to appropriate it.

This activity works even better if the model paragraph is co-constructed with input from pupils along the way.

Over time, this worked example also serves as something to go back to and use as a basis for future writing. “Remember the answer you wrote down from the other lesson? See if you can use that for the start of this answer.”

Raise awareness of overconfidence

Research suggests that boys are more likely to overestimate their ability and therefore put in less effort. Given this, teachers need to give them a tactful but accurate appraisal of their current working level. There is a quick pedagogical trick we can use to help with this.

Maths specialist Craig Barton suggests getting students to assign a confidence rating out of 10 next to their answers to questions you set. This technique brings a couple of benefits. First, it gives the teacher insight into the students’ confidence on a given topic. Second, and most importantly, it forces students to acknowledge the errors they make on high-confidence answers.

What kind of success rate should your students be achieving on the questions that you set them? According to Barak Rosenshine’s four decades of research into effective teaching, the optimal success rate is a magic 80 per cent. Any lower and the work you’re setting is likely to be too hard, which may further dent boys’ motivation. Any higher, and your male students are likely to be coasting, congratulating themselves on another easy win.

Promote an ethos of mastery over performance

We know that boys are more likely to follow performance goals, which tend to limit - or even sabotage - their potential. We want to encourage them to follow mastery goals instead. To do this, we need to first help boys to understand that frustration and failure are part of the learning process.

Imagine a scenario in which a boy gets given back a test paper with a poor grade at the top. He takes one look at it, screws it into a ball and lobs it across the room into your recycling box. As professionals, we take exception to that kind of behaviour. We feel the urge to discipline him for the apparent sign of disrespect for his learning.

If it happens again, it will need to be tackled. But a more fruitful approach in that moment might be to fish the test paper out of the box, smooth it out, and have a quiet word: “We all get frustrated when we find things hard. But I’m pleased you care about doing well in my class. Next time, work on the difference between aerobic and anaerobic respiration and you’ll be taking it home to show your parents, not chucking it in my bin.”

At the same time, we need to maintain a shared discourse of continually getting better at something, rather than encouraging boys to focus on distant extrinsic rewards, like promises of a lucrative career in finance or dentistry.

If you want to channel boys’ competitive natures, use the idea of competing against our previous self (mastery) rather than our peers (performance).

This can be as simple as drawing their attention to how they have improved over time. For instance, if Callum is convinced that he is “rubbish” at essay introductions, try looking back with him at some introductions he wrote at the start of the year and showing him how far he has already come.

In the battle against male academic demotivation, “control” is a key word. When dealing with low-confidence boys who are scared of failure, we need to instil a feeling that they can influence their own outcomes and shape their own academic destiny. When boys begin to taste success and appreciate the progress they’ve made, they start to buy into the idea that they have control over how far they’ll go in your subject - and that, ultimately, can make all the difference.

Mark Roberts is director of research at a school in Northern Ireland. His book, The Boy Question, is out now (Routledge)

This article originally appeared in the 16 July 2021 issue under the headline “The lost boys”