Getting girls. Keeping boys

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Description

Ridgewood School in Doncaster is successfully recruiting girls to courses which in the past have been dominated by boys. This programmes offers an insight into how they are achieving this. Ridgewood, a specialist engineering college, adopts a number of strategies to make subjects like engineering attractive to girls. It keeps workshop areas clean and professional; has themed assemblies with fancy dress and drama emphasise the role of successful women in engineering and science; and high profile women from male-dominated industries are invited into school as guest speakers. The school has also worked hard to keep in mind a good gender balance of staff when recruiting teachers. Most importantly, however, the school's staff explain how all this has been achieved without alienating boys from the subject. The strategy appears to be working well - the school records attainment levels in GCSE well above average - and there's a broadly equal gender split on targeted courses.