The Paula Principle

aspirations

Parental aspirations: a pair of literary examples

Parental aspirations are a powerful influence on educational achievement. They must also have some effect on what kinds of job young people want to do, though I'm not sure what the research shows on this. We do know from Ingrid Schoon's analysis of cohort data that girls' aspirations are higher than boys, at all levels of socio-economic status. (Schoon also shows that for the generation born in 1970 the class gap in aspirations is wider than is was for those born 12 years earlier; once again we have trends in gender and class pointing in different directions.) I have been looking generally for passages from literature whic illustrate the Paula…
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It’s not just OECD countries

The Paula Principle emerged for me from looking at OECD data. This shows conclusively how general the trend is for girls and women to do better than boys and men in education. But OECD countries are relatively wealthy, and not typical of all countries. I'm in Morocco at a meeting of the World Committe on Lifelong Learning. I've just learnt that girls here already outperform boys at the level of the baccalaureate. Moreover Faoud Chafiqi, a researcher who also works in the education ministry, reported that girls' aspirations for higher education are far stronger than boys. I assume, obviously, that the same tide is happening here as we have seen…
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Parental aspirations: a pair of literary examples

Parental aspirations are a powerful influence on educational achievement. They must also have some effect on what kinds of job young people want to do, though I'm not sure what the research shows on this. We do know from Ingrid Schoon's analysis of cohort data that girls' aspirations are higher than boys, at all levels of socio-economic status. (Schoon also shows that for the generation born in 1970 the class gap in aspirations is wider than is was for those born 12 years earlier; once again we have trends in gender and class pointing in different directions.) I have been looking generally for passages from literature whic illustrate the Paula…
Read More

It’s not just OECD countries

The Paula Principle emerged for me from looking at OECD data. This shows conclusively how general the trend is for girls and women to do better than boys and men in education. But OECD countries are relatively wealthy, and not typical of all countries. I'm in Morocco at a meeting of the World Committe on Lifelong Learning. I've just learnt that girls here already outperform boys at the level of the baccalaureate. Moreover Faoud Chafiqi, a researcher who also works in the education ministry, reported that girls' aspirations for higher education are far stronger than boys. I assume, obviously, that the same tide is happening here as we have seen…
Read More