A director of a third level college has expressed alarm about the current academic performance of boys in secondary schools.
Ms Marion Coy, director of Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, said an analysis of Leaving Certificate "high achievers" ( those with over 450 CAO points) painted "a worrying picture of juvenile male achievement in our education system".
She said less than 40 per cent of the high achieving students were males.
"The pattern of underachievement by young males in Irish education must a be a cause of serious concern to us all. Today, young women progress in greater numbers to tertiary education than young men and they outperform males in the total range of Leaving Certificate subjects. We know that roughly 80 per cent of those who start in second level finish the cycle and the completion rate is higher among females than males," she said.
"With the exception of the FÁS apprenticeship area, engineering and computing, all other areas of study have larger female than male intakes. In 2002, four males accepted engineering and technology courses for every one female. However females dominated the education, arts and medical disciplines.
"Science and business courses had a more balanced male/female ratio," she said.
"I am very pleased about the high level of achievement by young females but am increasingly uneasy about what is happening with young men. We have to ask ourselves as a society as to what is the reason for their relative underperformance," she said.
Young men did not appear to aspire to high academic achievement, she added.
"Their aspiration is to achieve the minimum required to take them where they are going, and where they are going is not a matter of passion to them. This is storing up major problems for Irish society in the future," she concluded.