Gender and educational achievement

• In 2022 girls still tend to do better than boys in GCSE, A-levels, BTECs and are much more likely to go to university
• Gender gap in education


  The fact that girls get better GCSE and A level results than boys in practically every subject, and women are much more likely to go to university than men
• The 2022 GCSE results show a 5.7% gender gap, with 52.5% of girls and 46.8% of boys achieving grade 5 and above in GCSE Maths and English
• The gender gap at GCSE has reduced slightly since 2019, when the gap was 6.6%
• The gender gap increased to 9.2% points in favour of girls in 2020, the first year of teacher awarded grades, before narrowing again in 2021
• Maths is the only GCSE subject where there is no gender gap - with 65% of both males and females achieved grade 5 and above
• The gender gap is small in double science, at only 3.6% points
• The gender gap is slightly larger in geography and history, with gap being 5.6 and 6.4% points respectively
• One of the largest gender gaps is in English with the achievement gap being 13%
• Girls are 9.9% points more likely to be entered for the Ebacc compared to boys in 2022
• At A-level, there is only a 3.9% point gap in the A*-C achievement rate between girls and boys
• Boys are much less likely to do A-levels than girls
• In Maths 79.9% of females achieved grades A*-C compared to 77.6% of boys at A-level
• In Psychology 82.2% of females achieved grades A*-C compared to only 71.3% of boys at A-level
• In Sociology 83.6% of females achieved grades A*-C compared to 77.4% of males at A-level
• The numbers of males and females sitting BTECs are similar, with just under 60 000 entries for both in 2022
• Girls are generally more likely to get higher grades than boys in BTECs
• 43% of 18 year old females entered university through UCAS in 2022 compared to only 32% of males
• There has been a significant increase in the number of females applying and being accepted to universities in recent years
• Between 1994 to 2022 there was a 140% increase in the number females applying to university, but only a 77% increase in the number of males
• Between 2010 to 2022 the increases for females and males were plus 19% and plus 11% respectively
• There remains a persistent gender gap at every level of education with girls doing better than boys on average
• There are a few subjects at A-level where boys outperform girls, most noticeably in terms of numbers Chemistry, and in terms of status, Further Maths
• The gender gap in university entry is even widening in favour of females
• Gender gap in education


  • Girls outperform boys in most subjects at every level of education: from primary school to degree level
• Main social factors external to the school which explain the gender gap in education


  • Changes in women's employment
  • Changes in the family
  • Changing girls' ambitions
  • The impact of feminism
  • Differential socialisation of boys and girls
• Changes in women's employment


  • The employment rate for women is 72.3% and for men it is 79% (2022)
  • Over the last 50 years there has been a growing service sector where women are increasingly likely to be employed over men and employers increasingly seek women for higher managerial roles because they generally have better communication skills than men
  • This means women now have greater opportunity than men in the world of work which makes education more relevant to them than in the 1970s when there was a relative lack of opportunity for women compared to men
  • The decline in manufacturing has led to a decline in traditional working-class men's factory based jobs, leading many working-class boys to perceive themselves as having no future
• Changes in the family


  • People get married much later in life, in their mid to late 30s rather than in their 20s, and dual earner households are now the norm, both of which normalise women having careers
  • Divorce Rates (and just relationship breakdowns) are also high as a rates of single parent households (most of which are headed by women), both of which would encourage women to work as in both situations it is desirable to have your own income
  • The increasing independence of women has led to a more uncertain role for men in British society, leaving many men feeling vulnerable and unsure of their identity in society – suffering from a crisis of masculinity
• Girls' changing ambitions


  In the 1970s their priorities were to get married and have a family, but by the 1990s their priorities were to get a career and have a family later on in life
• Impact of feminism


  • Feminism has campaigned for equal rights and opportunities for women in education, the workplace and wider society more generally
  • Feminist sociologists argue that many of the above changes have been brought about by their attempts to highlight gender inequalities in society and their efforts to encourage the government, schools and teachers to actually combat patriarchy and provide genuine equality of opportunity which has led to raising the expectations and self-esteem of girls
• Differential socialisation


  • Most parents think the appropriate socialisation for a girl is to handle her very gently, and to encourage her in relatively passive, quiet activities
  • Parents are also more likely to read with girls than with boys
  • Gender stereotypes held by parents also mean that 'typical boys' need more time to run around and play and 'let off steam', and parents are more likely to be dismissive if their boys are in trouble at school often seeing this as just them being 'typical boys'
  • These gender stereotypes and differences in gender socialisation disadvantage boys and advantage girls in education
• Personal level factors


  • Teacher bias plays a role in why girls do better than boys in education
  • Students' attitudes towards learning, their behaviour in school, their use of leisure time, and their self-confidence are important
  • Males are more likely than females to experience reading disabilities, antisocial behaviour, attention deficit disorders, dyslexia, and speech difficulties
  • Adolescent girls score higher in tests measuring non-cognitive skills such as attentiveness, organisational skills, and self-discipline
  • Boys' behavioural problems stem more from their home backgrounds than girls
  • Boys are more likely than girls to fail their GCSE English by getting lower than a grade C/4, which drastically reduces their chances of staying on into further and higher education and increases their chances of becoming NEET
  • The main set of exams, GCSEs, which have a huge impact on future educational pathways are sat at 16, when boys are going through puberty, which probably puts them at a disadvantage to girls who go through puberty earlier
• Differences in innate ability do not explain the gender gap in education
• The decline of manufacturing and crisis of masculinity only affects working class boys, possibly explaining their achievement relative to girls, but middle class girls outperform middle class boys too, who are less likely to associate masculinity with factory work
• It is difficult to measure the impact of Feminism: changes in the job market that lead to improved opportunities for women may be due to other technological and cultural changes
• The socialisation girls does not explain why they started to overtake boys in the late 1980s: if anything gender socialisation has become more gender neutral in recent years
• When analysing markets, a range of assumptions are made about the rationality of economic agents involved in the transactions
• Aspirations


  Ambitions or goals that people have
• Boys are less likely than girls to aspire to go to college / university across all ethnic groups
• For the white ethnic group, 57% of boys and 74% of girls aspire to go to university