Boys aged five struggle more at school, report suggests
One in five schoolboys aged five are below national literacy levels and cannot write their own name, a new study has found.
The Department for Education's figures for 2011 show that many five-year-olds are failing to achieve educational goals set out by the curriculum, which include social skills, literacy and numeracy and emotional development.
A gender gap is also present in the statistics, which suggest that out of girls and boys the same age, the boys fair worst with 40 per cent not being able to write a short letter and a further 19 per cent not being able to write short words such as "cat" or "dog".
Children's minister Sarah Teather said: "We are cutting down the number of early learning goals children need to reach at age five, with a stronger focus on the key skills that they will need to thrive as they grow up."
The government's Early Years Foundation Stage aims to improve literacy amongst early learners, Ms Teather added.
African-Caribbean schoolboys are sacrificing their education in a bid to look more masculine to their peers, a recent report by BBC News showed.
