Boys close the gap on girls: Lead for female GCSE students over their male counterparts narrows for sixth year in a row
- Lead for girls over boys at grade 4/C of GCSE has narrowed for sixth year in a row
- Girls also now have narrowest lead over boys at top grades of 7/A+ since 2009
The lead enjoyed by girls over boys for GCSE passes in Britain has narrowed for the sixth year in a row to its lowest level in more than 20 years, it was revealed today.
Some 71.7 per cent of female entries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland got a 4/C or higher this year, compared with 64.9 per cent for boys – a lead of 6.8 points.
This is the narrowest lead for girls at 4/C since at least 2000 – and is down from 6.9 points last year. The gap in 2019 was a much higher at 8.8 per cent in favour of girls.
The lead enjoyed by girls over boys for the top grades has also narrowed this year.
The proportion of female entries awarded grade 7/A or above this year was 24.9 per cent, which was 5.8 percentage points higher than male entries at 19.1 per cent.
This is the narrowest lead enjoyed by girls for 14 years since 2009. Last year, girls led boys by 7.4 percentage points – with girls at 30.0 per cent and boys at 22.6 per cent.
Pupils at Ark Greenwich Free School in South East London receive their GCSE results today
Pupils at Sullivan Upper School Grammar School in Belfast jump for joy on results day today
In 2019, the lead was 6.5 points for girls at 24.1 per cent, compared to boys at 17.6 per cent.
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Girls typically perform better in coursework while boys outperform girls in exams.
Chris McGovern, a former headteacher and education policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said a ‘heavily feminised’ profession was not helping boys close the gap.
Mr McGovern, who is now chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, told the Daily Mail today: ‘Girls benefit historically from continuous assessment and coursework and that has been phased out in recent years.
‘Boys historically have done better when assessment is done by final exams. As coursework has reduced, so has the gap. Generally, across education, girls outperform boys.
‘White working-class boys tend to underperform. They [schools] don’t do enough for boys. There are very few male teachers in school so they have no role models.’
One exam board leader said there could be lots of factors for the differences in performance by boys and girls, such as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, societal expectations and maturity levels.
Claire Thomson, director of regulation and compliance at AQA, said females tend to outperform their male classmates in most developed countries.
She said: ‘It’s purely speculation about the factors that might influence this – how people have come through the pandemic years and may have changed.
‘It could be about societal expectations, it could be about difference in attitudes to work, the push on equality, diversity and inclusion in the classroom changing the shift a little bit, it could be about maturity levels.
A JCQ graphic shows the difference in performance at GCSE level between boys and girls
A JCQ graph shows how choices vary between boys and girls for subjects taken at GCSE
‘There are loads of factors in the mix so it’s really difficult to say anything beyond speculation.
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‘The main thing today is to celebrate the achievement of all our students who sat exams this year confident in the knowledge that they have been assessed fairly and, really critically, importantly, when we are talking about males and females they have been assessed anonymously.
‘So our markers do not know whether they are male or female students when they are assessed.’
While traditional A*-G grades are used in Northern Ireland and Wales, in England these have been replaced with a 9-1 system, where 9 is the highest.
A 4 is broadly equivalent to a C grade, and a 7 is broadly equivalent to an A.
Last summer the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) – which publishes exam results – said it was looking at the possibility of recording results for non-binary pupils rather than just females and males in future exam breakdowns.
Asked about this at a briefing on GCSE results, Ian Morgan, chair of the JCQ board, said: ‘I think it’s really important to set the policy context in which the JCQ and awarding organisations and exam boards operate.
‘We have a direct relationship with schools and colleges in terms of collecting data and information in relation to learners and so there would need to be policy changes so that data is collected at source in order for JCQ to be able to do anything with it.’
He added that while JCQ is aware of these questions it is ‘only a piece of the jigsaw and other things would need to change in order for JCQ to progress in that manner.’
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