Throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century the education of girls has not received much attention in mainstream education circles.  In contrast, across the western world issues for boys, sometimes identified as the ‘crisis’ in boys’ education, have benefited from a good deal of writing in popular press articles, government enquiries and academic journals (High-Tower 2003). Boys, it has been frequently argued, are deserving of a larger share of resources, special pedagogic interventions and significant amounts of concern. At times this position is presented as though a rightful claim for ‘their turn’ after so much attention had previously been paid to girls in education. Which leaves the question: are girls the success story in current educational experience and outcomes?

This paper argues that  they are not and that the slippage from the times during which ‘gender’ meant girls to its current masculine focus has been particularly detrimental for certain groups of girls who continue to be largely overlooked in educational writing and research. In particular disadvantaged schools on the urban fringes  comprise sites of multiple disadvantage with particular gender implications.  Not only do students at these schools miss out on the educational benefits of city living such as ready access to libraries, museums, galleries and theatres (Gill & Crotty, 2004), the schools are often identified as ‘hard to staff’ and struggle to attract experienced high quality teachers. 

Drawing on data produced in a study of three outer urban secondary schools in Australia which was designed to investigate the effects of class location on the aspirations of students and their educational outcomes (Tranter 2010), this paper demonstrates the ways in which gender impacts on the performance, motivation and identity of working class students.  While the struggle of working class boys in such schools has been described in terms of the need to develop new forms of masculinity that are more flexible than the traditional hegemonic working class male (Connell, 2005), a process that is far from simple, the situation of the girls may be even more complex.    We suggest that for working class girls the option of adopting a traditional gender identity can offer a sense of class allegiance and refuge in a schooling encounter in which they are perceived and perceive themselves as unlikely to be successful (Walkerdine, Lucey & Melody 2001; Archer 2006) .  In other words, many of the choices made by these girls can be seen as a process of re-traditionalisation ( Beck & Beck- Gernsheim, 2002) within a particular set of environmental cues.  The paper offers a richly detailed picture of the situation of working class girls in their final years of schooling located on the fringe of an Australian city.

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