Or they resit

Or they resit.The radical alternativeBefore sitting A-levels students register their intention to apply to university They receive advice and attend open days as they do now. Information, such as modular results, is fed into their file as details emerge.The headteacher’s reference is submitted before the students sit their examinations but well after the current cut-off date for applications, giving the head more time to assess the students and their work.When A-level results are published in August, students apply for one place on one course at one institution and receive a quick acceptance or rejection. Those who are unsuccessful move quickly into a second round of applications.. University classrooms these days are gender-free zones. At least in literature departments, it appears that neither we nor our students need any longer pay much attention to old-fashioned notions such as affirmative action, making space for women to speak, keeping men from dominating discussions, or giving women special encouragement to help them perform better in tests and examinations

Our women students perform exactly as well as the men. They talk as much in class, they are as likely to be the first to formulate ideas in discussion, they show confidence and are at ease with themselves in public. They score equally highly in exams, they take as many first class degrees.

And, naturally, it goes without saying, some of them match some of the men in desultory attendance, poor performance, and missing assignment deadlines. As for what they study, I see little evidence of gender-bias there either. All our students read extraordinarily widely among works by women and by men, and there is no partisan pattern apparent in choices of authors for special options or dissertations. Angela Carter is as much in evidence as Salman Rushdie, Luce Irigaray as widely cited as Roland Barthes.
So I am perplexed by what seems to me to be a sotto voce strain of gender prejudice rumbling away in our broadsheet papers at the moment. After all, the youngish people writing, particularly on art pages, graduated pretty recently from those same charmed classrooms in which I teach.Let me be specific by taking a particular instance which has bothered me.

A decent amount of space has been devoted recently to profiles of Frances Coady, the new managing director of Granta Books, an admired, highbrow imprint which is about to be relaunched.The consensus seems to be that while Coady is a “good thing”, something has been lost in the transition from male to female boss. A journalist well known for her feminism recently wrote, in the midst of her admiration for Coady’s energy and enthusiasm, that she regretted the passing of the “inspiring dream” that was Bill Buford’s old Granta Books. Coady’s Granta Books, she maintains, will be safe rather than exciting, will follow trends rather than setting them.She had fallen into a trap we all stumble into at times. What we as critics seem to feel nostalgic for when caught off guard is what Carmen Callil has called “jockstrap publishing” – boys’ books, a particular style of nonchalance and wit, authors such as Graham Swift, Roddy Doyle and Seamus Deane. There is nothing at all wrong with that kind of writing, of course, but why reproach Coady for moving on from swashbuckling men to …