Are we stricter on sons or daughters and did Alton Towers prevail? This, and more...

1. Son/Daughter Debate 👦👧

Last week, we conducted a little experiment 👩‍🔬. Around half of you were asked a question involving your (perhaps hypothetical) daughter and the other half the exact same question, except with son switched for daughter. The results are in! 👀

Firstly, overall around 95% of you responded that you would talk it over with your child to understand what the problem is. The remainder mostly said that they would be stricter with their child as they should be working harder.

The results did vary by whether you were asked about a son or daughter, however. 4% of you would make sure your daughter would do their assignments compared to 8% when asked about your son. These may be very small differences, but the answers are significantly different, meaning that it’s not due to random chance that the differences arise.

Bar chart showing the results to the question "Imagine you have a school-age son/daughter. On parents' evening the teacher tells you that your son/daughter is doing poorly and doesn't seem to be involved in the work. Which of these are you most likely to do?", split by child gender and actions.

That’s not all, though!

Not only do your responses depend on whether we asked you about a son or daughter, but also whether you yourself are male or female!

12% of fathers would say their son should be working harder if they found themselves in this situation, but only 6% of fathers would say to their daughter that they should be working harder.

Mums also said they would be stricter on their sons, with 6% saying they would make sure their son does the assignment, compared to 3% doing the same with their daughters.

We also considered whether your responses to this question would differ based on whether or not you were a parent already, but we were surprised to find that this wasn’t the case.

The differences between sons and daughters are fairly small, but they are statistically significant. What does this mean though? Well, it may highlight a subconscious bias we have, however slight, that we are inclined to be slightly stricter with boys than girls. 👀

2. Favourite Year Groups

Last week, we asked primary teachers which year groups would make you want to leave your job so that you could avoid teaching them ❌

Overall, 68% of EYFS and KS1 teachers said you’d leave if you were asked to teach upper KS2. The feelings were reciprocated by KS2 teachers, with 67% of you saying you’d leave if you were asked to teach Reception and Year 1.

Years 2 to 4 were the least likely to make you want to leave. Could this be because this age-range are more independent but still have the primary innocence about them? 🤔

That being said, almost half of primary teachers said that they’d teach any primary year group rather than leave their job.

Bar chart showing the results to the question "Is there any year group that you would feel so unhappy or unconfident teaching that you would rather hand in your notice without a job to go to than teach the year", split by current key stage being taught and year phases.

Secondary teachers feel more strongly that their role is to improve social mobility. 74% of secondary teachers agree that education’s role is to improve social mobility, compared to 63% of primary teachers.

When looking deeper into the affluence of the schools, it’s also teachers in schools with more deprived intake that feel a stronger sense of duty to improve mobility. 80% of teachers in FSM Q4 schools agree that they should improve social mobility vs. 70% in secondary FSM Q1 schools.

Only a small percentage of you disagreed with a much larger percentage stating that you were ‘neither agree nor disagree’.

Stacked bar chart showing the results to the question "I think the purpose of education is to improve social mobility?", split by free-school meal quartile and school phase

4. Alton Towers 🎢

For a bit of fun, we asked if you’d pick taking your class to Alton Towers over the National Portrait Gallery. The results were fairly evenly split. Secondary teachers were more inclined towards Alton Towers, with primary teachers leaning more towards the National Portrait Gallery.

This got us thinking 💭 ‘Did Tappers who agreed that the purpose of education is social mobility also pick Alton Towers?’ 🤔 So we analysed the data… it would appear that social mobility is no barrier to going to Alton Towers 😂 A slightly amusing null finding to say the least!