Nursery World - Enabling Environments: Outdoors

Girls consistently achieve better than the boys, but research suggests that the way to male attainment is to send them outdoors, says Sarah Ghahremani.

For some years, concern has been growing about the underachievement of boys in education. The contributing factors behind this may be many, and include genetic make-up and brain development, societal factors and beginning formalised learning too early.

This apparent lack of achievement has led to research into the ways in which boys learn and how their attainment and dispositions for learning can be improved. There is strong evidence to suggest that playing and learning in the outdoors can go some way in helping to raise boys' achievements.

Throughout all the stages of education, boys are found to be lagging behind girls in terms of attainment. The concern for the underachievement of boys is borne out by results, statistics and research. The DCSF (2008) reports that in the years 2007/8, end of Foundation Stage results showed that girls continued to achieve at a higher level than boys. For each assessment area more girls than boys work securely within (6 points or more) the Early Learning Goals.

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