Girl pupils 'pay price of focus on unruly boys'

Teachers are ignoring problems girls face because of the official preoccupation with boys' educational underachievement, research published today suggests.

Girls bullied at school dropped out or were expelled because teachers failed to notice their unhappiness and focused all their attention on disruptive boys, the report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the National Children's Bureau concluded.

The number of girls who had been expelled or dropped out had been seriously underestimated by schools and ministers. Although official statistics showed that girls accounted for 17 per cent of expulsions – about 1,800 a year – there was evidence that girls were increasingly likely to be excluded unofficially or to skip lessons without schools' knowledge, the report found.

Particular attention needed to be given to Afro-Caribbean girls, who were nearly four times more likely to be expelled than white young women, according to an 1998-99 study of Birmingham schools by one of the authors, Professor Audrey Osler of Leicester University.

The report, Not a Problem? Girls and School Exclusion, by Professor Osler and Dr Cathy Street, of the New Policy Institute, a think-tank, found girls who were unhappy at school tended to become anxious and depressed. But they were unlikely to receive help because their behaviour caused few problems for other pupils, even though they might be skipping school.

Disaffected boys received more help because they disrupted lessons with their bad behaviour and were more likely to turn to crime if they were expelled from school.

Professor Osler said: "In the moral panic about male crime and disaffection, girls appear to have been neglected. Girls apparently are achieving better at school than boys according to the averages but there are still a significant number of young women who are finding school extremely difficult."

Being bullied was a main cause of girls being expelled or excluding themselves by persistent truancy, Professor Osler added. "It is the kind of bullying that girls subject each other to which is the problem," she said. "Girls tend to use verbal and psychological bullying, rather than the physical bullying typically used by boys. This kind of behaviour can be very difficult for teachers to identify."

The report concluded that schools' "institutional failure" to stop bullying often led to the victim retaliating violently, leading to their suspension.

Professor Osler said girls' truancy and exclusion rates were far higher than the official figures but that support services for pupils suspended or expelled were dominated by boys. "Girls are very clever about the way they truant. They go in to school, get marked in and then disappear. Schools in the study were very surprised at what girls were telling us."

There was no surprise that teachers failed to challenge girls who sat quietly but did no work in lessons, she added. "If you are a teacher under pressure who is dealing with a class containing some pupils, perhaps boys, who are being very disruptive, it is hardly surprising that you may not tackle students who are not doing any work. You may just be grateful that they are quiet."

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: "We are providing £178m this year to help tackle poor behaviour and provide education outside school for excluded pupils – 33 per cent higher than 2000-01 and a 10-fold increase on 1996-97."