Sacrificial girls: a case study of the impact of streaming and setting on gender reform Emma Charlton a , Martin Mills *a , Wayne Martino b and Lori Beckett c a The University of Queensland, Australia; b University of Technology, Sydney, Australia; c University of Western Ontario, Canada (Submitted 5 May 2005; resubmitted 12 September 2005; accepted 19 October 2005) This article reports on research funded by the Australian Research Council to investigate school responses to gender equity. It addresses the efforts of a disadvantaged school to tackle what they perceived to be gender inequalities, but in the process of constructing a top-set and bottom-set/ stream class they are developing new forms of old inequalities and new forms of inequalities. This research indicates that despite popular assertions that girls’ education has become the priority of schools and education systems, girls are being further disadvantaged through attempts to implement market strategies coupled with gender reform agendas grounded in liberal notions of equity and relying on unsophisticated notions of affirmative action. In addition, this study highlights the extent to which a media-driven debate about boys’ education has influenced the constitution of boys as the ‘new disadvantaged’ with the capacity to determine the nature of gender reform agendas and programmes in schools. Introduction This article is concerned with contributing to the body of growing literature detailing the effects of the current boys’ debate in education on the schooling of girls (see Martin, 1982; Gilligan, 1982; Yates, 1995, 1997; Foster, 1996; Foster et al., 2001). It examines the process of streaming and setting in one school where a concern about boys’ education was a factor in the construction of various set and streamed classes. This article argues that these processes have disadvantaged a number of girls in this school. The article is not a review of streaming—organising all classes on the basis of general perceived ability—or setting—organising a class on students’ *Corresponding author. School of Education, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia. Email: m.mills@uq.edu.au British Educational Research Journal Vol. 33, No. 4, August 2007, pp. 459–478 ISSN 0141-1926 (print)/ISSN 1469-3518 (online)/07/040459-20 # 2007 British Educational Research Association DOI: 10.1080/01411920701434011