by TAMMY COHEN, femail.co.uk

Imagine your child has a teacher who had a grudge against him.

Now imagine this teacher deliberately sets him work only in his weak subjects, never capitalises on the things he is good at, makes him feel inadequate and, eventually, leads him to give up on education altogether.

You'd protest, wouldn't you? You'd want your son moved, the teacher disciplined. You'd see the Head, change the school. Now, imagine if it isn't a teacher who has it in for your son, but the school system itself. Where do you go now?

The fact is that many parents and education experts alike now believe our school system is inherently prejudiced against boys.

The materials used, methods of teaching and the restrictions of the National Curriculum all favour the way girls learn. As a result, our boys are failing in alarming numbers.

Figures for last year's Government tests show that by the age of seven, girls were already out-performing boys in reading and spelling.

At eleven, the gap had widened with 76% of girls achieving level four and above as opposed to only 65% of boys. By the age of fourteen, 17% more girls than boys reached level five or above.

Why are schools failing our boys?

The problems start early. Boys' fine-motor skills and cognitive skills develop later than girls' so they lag behind girls throughout much of early school life.

Once in school, young boys find it physically difficult to sit still for long periods.

Teachers used to be able to work around this by developing techniques of teaching in an outdoor physical environment but the new curriculum with its emphasis on literacy and numeracy hours means a return to formal, classroom-based teaching.

Studies have shown that young boys need positive male role models and yet the primary school system is overwhelmingly dominated by female teachers and classroom assistants.

Experts claim that boys' brains work differently to girls'. They have problems with language and expression and need extra help to catch up in these areas.

The move away from phonetics towards reading through recognising shapes and pictures is also thought to be better suited to girls' thought processes than boys'.

Texts stipulated by the National Curriculum are seen as geared more towards girls than boys. Research has shown that in classes where boys were taught English from non-fiction texts rather than classical novels, boys achieved better results.

The change from an exam-based educational system to a continuously assessed one is also seen to benefit girls who are generally more organised, have better perseverance skills, and are less easily discouraged than boys.

What can we do to stop the rot?

Start boys at school a year later than girls. This radical solution, put forward by Steve Biddulph in his book Raising Boys (Thorsons, £7.99) gets around the fact that boys develop language and fine-motor skills later than girls and prevents them feeling 'behind' right from the start.

Stop little boys switching off school by allowing them to learn in an informal physical way.

Encourage more men into primary schools to provide positive role models, from teacher level right down to getting dads in to help out in the classrooms.

Separate boys and girls into single sex classes for certain subjects.

A recent experiment in the Cotswold School where boys and girls were split up for English showed that boys' results improved dramatically when they were free from the inhibitions of being with a group of high-achieving girls and were able to choose the texts that appealed to them.