Girls should be ‘mobilised’ to stop boys becoming unemployable ‘wastes of space’, Lord Blunkett has said.
The former Labour education secretary said schools should empower girls to ‘expect more’ from the boys they have relationships with.
It would stop boys ‘taking it as read’ that girls will be interested in them even with a poor work ethic and attitude, he said.
The prospect of being shunned by girls would be an ‘incredibly powerful’ incentive to prevent boys failing in life.
He pointed out that many boys try to copy influencers such as Andrew Tate instead of striving to become useful citizens.
To combat this, Lord Blunkett, 78, suggested schools promote ‘positive masculinity’ to form the ‘fathers of the future’.
He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We need to mobilise the girls to ensure that they get the message across that if you’re a waste of space, we don’t want to know you.’
Lord Blunkett, who grew up in poverty, addressed concerns about the underachievement of boys.
They have always performed worse than girls at GCSE and are less likely to enter university.
Boys need to be shown the link between hard work and a good future in their early teens before they ‘switch off’ and ‘see it as not for them’, he said, adding that boys who ‘want a relationship with young women’ should be shown the need to step up.
This year, the National Education Union revealed a rise in boys becoming radicalised by online ‘incel’ culture and Andrew Tate, a self-professed ‘misogynist’ YouTuber. Often these pupils become disengaged in school and develop dark views about women.
Lord Blunkett said: ‘We’re going to have to engage every mechanism, and one of those is for girls to say “boys, we’re not going to have anything to do with you unless you start engaging with your own future, because otherwise we’ll be carrying you.”
‘That sends a message to young men who feel like victims… it’s your own future in your hands, it’s not somebody else’s fault you’re a waste of space, it’s yours.
The peer, who served as Tony Blair’s education secretary, said during his childhood in Sheffield boys would often go into apprenticeships aged 15 where they would be ‘mentored’ by men.
‘They were role models, and they were support mechanisms,’ he said. ‘This challenge to boys should not be a threat.
‘This idea that somehow masculinity is being denigrated is wrong.
‘What you’ve got to do is demonstrate your masculinity in an incredibly positive way.’
He said schools should ‘challenge’ boys to raise their aspiration to lead a ‘meaningful’ life contributing to society.
This in turn would lead to ‘supportive’ family structures if they become fathers.
Lord Blunkett said the fact that so many boys are ending up as Neet – not in education, employment and training – is ‘bad for them’, ‘bad for the economy’ and ‘corrosive of the social fabric’.
The issue is particularly stark for boys from a white working-class background – who are the lowest-achieving group in the country.
He said migrant families in the UK see education as a ‘ladder to prosperity’, but some boys from poor British backgrounds ‘think this is not for them’.
‘What we’ve got to do is to work out what would have the same effect and energizing driving force for more traditional communities, and particularly where white working class boys don’t see the point,’ he said.
He advocated schools signposting more work experience and apprenticeship opportunities, so that pupils see ‘the relationship between experience of work in something they are interested in, and their continuance in engaging with education.’
And he called for New Labour’s Sure Start programme to be rejuvenated – after spending on it fell by more than two-thirds and many centres closed or were scaled back.
Sure Start centres, for disadvantaged areas, offer early years learning, health and family support services and have been shown to boost pupils’ grades years later.
In 2024, 73.7 per cent of GCSE entries from girls achieved at least a grade 4 – a standard pass –in comparison with 67.1 per cent of entries from boys.
In addition, universities accepted around 44,000 fewer male students than female.
Blunkett, who was blind from birth, was from a deprived family and lost his father aged 12 in an industrial accident at work.
He studied part-time at a technical college winning a place at the University of Sheffield, where he studied politics.