Some boys' problems in education: – what is the role of VET?

The last two decades has seen an increasing political concern for the high dropout rates and low perfor-mance in education of boys compared to girls – at times in the form of a ‘moral panic’ (Smith 2010). This has also been the case in Denmark where ‘the boy problem’ in education now is placed high on the agenda of education policy. The purpose of this article is first to examine this ‘boy problem’ in relation to VET. By considering the gender divisions and the value of the VET programmes on the labour market, it explores what kind of problems boys have in VET. Secondly it explores some the explanations from earlier research for boys problems in the education system: boys’ anti-school culture and the effects of institutional differentiation-polarisation. The article's empirical basis is two sets of qualitative interviews (individual and group) with around 170 students attending vocational schools, two thirds male.