The Relative Popularity of Secondary School Subjects at Various Ages

From bad to worse? Pupils' attitudes to modern foreign languages at ages 14 and 15

“…Among a large sample of pupils from selective schools in the early 1930s, R. A. Pritchard found French a popular subject for both boys and girls (Pritchard 1935 work with grammar school pupils (1974), French and Latin scored at or near the bottom for interest, freedom and social benefit, but very highly for difficulty at ages 12/13, though rather less so at ages 15/16. In the 1984/5 run of the option choice project, involving pupils of mixed abilities in comprehensive schools, both French and German were relatively unpopular, particularly among boys (Harvey and Stables 1984).…”

Gender Differences in Subject Preference and Perception of Subject Importance among Third Year Secondary School Pupils in Single‐sex and Mixed Comprehensive Schools

“…Both preference and perception of importance are, however, often cited as primary reasons for subject choice (Reid, Barnett & Rosenbery, 1974;Woods, 1976;Keys &Ormerod, 1976;Ryrie, Furst & Lauder, 1979 An early study of subject popularity was by Pritchard (1935). The relative positions of subjects among the 14-year-olds in his survey are given below (Table 1).…”

Factors Accompanying the Scientific Interest of a Selected Group of English Secondary Pupils

“…There is considerable evidence to show that boys like science more than girls (Terman, 1925 ;Pintner, 1933 ;Shakespeare, 1936 ;Ball, 1936 ;Struthers, 1939 ;Rallison, 1939Rallison, , 1943Witty and Coomer, 1943 ;Wall, 1945 ;Eid, 1948 ;Brooks and Vernon, 1956 ;Amatora, 1957 ;Hill and Hole, 1958) and some to show that girls tend to prefer the biological and boys physical and computational science (Mau, 1912 ;Ottaway, 1935 ;Pritchard, 1935 ;Burns, 1955).…”