Confined and Silenced: how do schoolgirls manage?

Ten years ago Dale Spender found that girls in mixed classes were ‘muted’ with boys getting more attention and time from teachers. Now, with boys increasingly out‐numbering girls, Helen Bright, who teaches in an Inner London comprehensive, reports that boys' dominance in the classroom and throughout school is detrimental to girls' learning opportunities and career aspirations. She describes how a group of teachers are trying to reverse the effects on girls of the shift in the balance of the sexes.