The same girls reported wanting to protect younger girls who they see posting online about “wanting a toxic relationship with a guy” in which they are “told to watch their behaviour or change their attitude”.<\/p>\n
They could see the ways girls were performing a strange kind of female role in order to please boys who are themselves performing a nasty version of masculinity.<\/p>\n
Their solution: organise. In one school I visited in Rochdale, they were starting a girls club in which they would discuss it all: from gender inequality, to domestic violence and body shaming, to periods, sexuality and friendship groups.<\/p>\n
But leaders from the trust of a Birmingham-based school raised a further concern: girls at school might be worryingly quiet in class, but that’s if they make it into school at all.<\/p>\n
Chronic absenteeism (missing 50% or more of school sessions) is on the rise. In 2017\/18, only 6% of girls affected by absenteeism were severely absent. In 2024\/25, that proportion more than doubled to 13%. Absence rates were higher for particular groups of pupils including those eligible for free school meals.<\/p>\n
Mental health issues like anxiety were the most common concern raised by parents of girls to a helpline run by the charity Young Minds. And there’s also caring responsibilities.<\/p>\n
I was told of girls as young as Year 6 tasked with caring for younger siblings, and missing lessons as a result. In one city, I spoke to a teenage girl who had spent a year away from school, “helping her mum” with the newest baby.<\/p>\n
Tom Campbell, who heads up the ACT Academy Trust, which runs 38 schools in England and Wales, told me: “The decline [for girls] is real. And the data is flashing red.” GCSE passes in English and Maths are down 7% at grade 4, (previously a grade C).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The same girls reported wanting to protect younger girls who they see posting online about “wanting a toxic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-528107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}