Gary Wilson: Raising Boys’ Achievement (KS3 & KS4)

One of the country’s leading authorities on raising boys’ achievement, Gary Wilson is currently a freelance consultant and author of several books including “Raising Boys’ Achievement” and, for parents, “How to Help Your Boy Succeed”. A teacher for twenty-seven years, he began work on raising boys’ achievement in his own cluster of schools in West Yorkshire in 1993. In 2001 he was asked to write “Using the National Healthy School Standard to Raise Boys’ Achievement” for the NHA and the DFES based on the success of his work in schools.

In 2003 he was made the country’s first Local Authority school improvement officer with specific responsibility for raising boys’ achievement. From 2005-2010 he was chair of the National Education Breakthrough Program on Raising Boys’ Achievement, established by the National Primary Care Trust and the DFES Innovations Unit, which worked across 300 schools nationwide.

In 2005 he led a double national award-winning campaign to raise boys’ achievement across Kirklees LA. In 2008 he ran a campaign to raise boys’ achievement in Derbyshire, which won a national award for work with parents. He has spoken at countless LA and national conferences all over the world. He has advised and delivered training in over a thousand schools and over thirty LAs across the UK and internationally. He has delivered countless sessions for parents and governors and worked with boys across the length and breadth of the country. He presents keynotes, leads local authority projects and delivers INSET days and training sessions for Primary and Secondary schools, twilight sessions and parents’ sessions.

His first book “Breaking Through The Barriers to Boys’ Achievement and Developing a Caring Masculinity” was described in the Guardian as “undoubtedly the seminal work on this subject.” He has advised the BBC, appeared on Woman’s Hour a number of times and his work has been the subject of several Teachers’ TV programmes. He is also adviser on raising boys’ achievement to Oxford University Press, specifically as series expert on “Project X”, a set of resources that have significantly increased boys’ engagement with reading. He is also co-author of the OUP Pathway for raising boys’ achievement. In 2016 he produced two new books “Boys Will Be…Brilliant! Getting it Right for Boys in Early Years” (with Linda Tallent) and “100 Ideas for Primary Teachers: Raising Boys’ Achievement”. Published in January 2021, “Let’s Hear it From the Boys” affirms powerfully just how important it is to start any work on boys’ achievement with the real experts; the boys themselves.