A World without Men

Gareth Malone - geeky choirmaster and motivator extraordinaire - launched his latest venture on BBC2 last night. This time he's tackling the sad fact that boys fall way behind girls in primary schools these days, especially in reading and writing. He's going to be giving special boy-friendly lessons to a group of lads in an Essex primary school - and no doubt his efforts will improve their plight. But what a sad plight it is - at school these boys clearly feel themselves in a largely alien world, one where they can only fail, because the whole setup plays to the strengths of the girls. Gareth will be giving them something more tailored to their need for outdoor activity, competition and risk-taking - and from the get-go they seem to thrive on it. But what is most striking about their world, in school and, apparently, out - and what is never actually mentioned - is that there are virtually no men anywhere. Occasionally a father is glimpsed in the background, but there's no sign of a male teacher, or a man in any capacity, at the school. It's a female world. Not only do these boys have no male role models - some of them seem to have no men at all in their lives. Also striking is that several of the all-female staff who you would have assumed were classroom assistants or teenagers on work experience are actually fully qualified teachers - and estuary English is spoken throughout the school, from the head(mistress, natch) down. This is all rather dispiriting to those of us who remember when teachers came in two sexes and gave us something to aspire to, some kind of role model - oh and they also taught us stuff, but that's another matter. Meanwhile, perhaps there's some hope for the boys in Gove's latest wheeze...