Improving gender equity in learning outcomes

community with better information on the various aspects of student learning, such as student assessment, can ultimately help improve the quality of learning outcomes.

IMPROVING GENDER EQUITY IN LEARNING OUTCOMES

Like many middle- and high-income countries, Sri Lanka must confront a new challenge for gender equity: boys lagging behind in access at the higher levels of the educational system and underperforming in terms of learning achievement. An analysis of educational participation and achievement data for Sri Lanka clearly shows that girls outperform boys at every level of the educational system, especially at higher levels (Aturupane, Shojo, and ebenezer 2018). This is a relatively new challenge for most countries, and the policies to address this challenge are less tested. nonetheless, for Sri Lanka to improve its learning outcomes overall, it must address this issue, and if it is successful it may be a pioneer in this emerging challenge to gender equity. it should also note that despite high educational achievements, the employment outcomes of women have been less satisfactory over a long period of time (Aturupane 1996).

Research on boys’ underperformance in Sri Lanka suggests several key factors, including societal and cultural influences, curriculum and learning styles, peer group pressures, and attitudes to education that are likely having an impact on boys’ educational performance. The results of a 2018 study to better understand the reasons for boys’ underperformance in Sri Lanka found that a set of social and cultural influences may be having an impact on boys’ performance. These include cultural perceptions of the relative importance of education for boys versus girls, gender stereotypes about the innate academic ability of boys and girls, and differences in parental oversight of boys and girls (Aturupane, Shojo, and ebenezer 2018). The same study suggests that classroom-level variables such as curriculum and assessment methodology, the structure of the school day and the academic workload, and the lack of male teachers in the system may be having an impact on boys’ performance as well. Finally, interviews and focus group discussions indicate that student behavior and attitudes such as a lack of professional ambition among boys and the absence of positive role models are also important factors affecting boys’ educational performance in Sri Lanka.

Policy options to improve boys’ learning achievement in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka should consider special training for principals and school leadership to sensitize them to gender-based stereotypes that may influence the performance of both male and female students. Cultural and societal norms and stereotypes are deeply entrenched, and identifying effective strategies to address them is a challenge. Moreover, researchers have emphasized that gender stereotypes form early, and therefore it is important to address them as early in the school cycle as possible, even at the preschool level (Aina and Cameron 2011). Strong school leadership may be particularly important to this endeavor as a comparison of an experimental program in a school in Australia and in Jamaica suggests. Both of these programs attempted to alter gender stereotypes. in Jamaica, the program experimented with interventions such as counseling and adopting