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The Challenges and Implications of a Decline in Educational Attainment and Retention of Boys: The UAE and Qatar

Thu, April 18, 10:00 to 11:30am, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Atrium (Level 2), Waterfront A

Proposal

Over the past two decades, policymakers, international organizations, and scholars focusing on gender and education have largely concentrated their efforts on issues relating to girls (The World Bank, 2013; King & Winthrop, 2015). However, results from recent international assessments, coupled with data on higher education enrollment rates, have led to concern about the performance and retention of males (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD, 2015]; Fryer & Levitt, 2010). Yet, boys remain largely ignored in global and national education agendas. Across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, countries have sought to align with and meet international standards and adopted policies in favor of girls’ education, even though girls continue to demonstrate greater educational attainment and higher achievement than boys.

In this paper, we paper focus on the cases of the UAE and Qatar, two GCC states established less than half a century ago that have made remarkable progress in terms of education provision for males and females. While both countries have universal enrollment close to 100% for boys and girls at the primary and secondary level, the percentage of female students increases greatly at the tertiary levels in both countries, alongside a concurrent drop in the percentage of male students (UIS, 2016). In the 2016-17 academic year, in the UAE, females comprised between 80% and 90% of students at two prominent federal universities (Pennington, 2017). In Qatar, during the 2015-15 academic year, females comprised 71% of national higher education students (Benmansour, 2017). In terms of achievement, across national and international assessments, boys in both the UAE and Qatar are underperforming compared to girls. In national exams in Qatar, for example, during the 2010-2011 academic year, girls scored an average of 20 points higher than boys on the Qatar Senior School Certificate (General Secretariat for Development Planning [GSDP], 2012; Ridge, 2014). In terms of international assessments, on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), boys in the UAE and Qatar have consistently scored less than girls across all three domains (OECD, 2014, 2016). The greatest gap in PISA 2015 was in reading, where the UAE had a 50-point gap and Qatar had a 53-point gap in favor of girls (OECD, 2016a).

This paper examines policies that have overshadowed boys’ education, explores the different ways in which male underachievement has emerged, and analyzes the critical implications for both the labor market and society. It uses existing literature, data from international assessments, and interviews to examine the relative persistence of and performance of males in education in the UAE and Qatar. It finds there is a shortage of policies and initiatives in both countries to address gender issues relative to males, particularly for those from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, even though bringing boys educational attainment and achievement in the UAE and Qatar on par with that of girls would likely have long-term benefits for society across a range of areas, including the labor market. The paper concludes by offering some recommendations for future research, especially related to males from disadvantaged backgrounds.

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