Why are girls out-performing boys at GCSE

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Ayiesha Buckle                


Introduction – Why are girls out-performing boys at GCSE?

For my coursework, I am researching into why girls are generally doing better than boys when it comes to GCSEs, because I want to see if the subjects being taught are more intended for girls rather than boys meaning that the boys pay less attention.  

I feel rather strongly about this because being a girl I think that the current subjects taught in my school are more directed at girls and that they seem to listen more if the subject is interesting and directed towards something they like.

One aim: Why are girls out-performing boys at GCSE?

A Second aim: Is the reason to do with coursework?

A Third aim: Are teachers stereotyping girls to be better than boys to begin with?

This year’s GCSE exam results, for more than 600,000 students, show that girls are still outstripping boys in almost every subject.  Last year, boys narrowed the gap by 0.3 to 8.9 percentage points but this year it increased to nine percentage points.  The government says it is worried by the “unacceptable” difference.  On the BBC - Simon, London, UK said: Girls now outperform boys at GCSE because of the ‘feminisation’ of the examination process.  Whereas before a typical history question might have read “give an account of the key events during the reign of Queen Victoria, and explain why they are significant”, the question now reads “Describe what it might have been like growing up in a Manchester poor house during the reign of Queen Victoria.”  Instead of fact-retention and recall, in which girls and boys are roughly equally proficient, the question now requires empathy, something that females excel in, and at which males are useless. 

 However many disagree with the subjects being more feminine and suggest that there are other reasons such as major sporting events that distract the boys progress. On the BBC from James, UK says:  Has it not occurred to anyone that the World Cup was on during the GCSE exam period?  This is likely to have acted as a distraction to more boys that girls and reduced their revision work and concentration on the exams.  This suggests that the system is stratified.  This means the hierarchical arrangement of social classes is determined by birth, income, education, etc.  Teachers are now putting girls on the top of the stratification pyramid and boys at the bottom; this may be happening through labelling and stereotyping.  Labelling is known as teacher’s evaluations which are where teachers ‘attach’ the label to pupils from their interaction with students.  Stereotyping is a popularly held belief about a type of person or a group of people which does not take into account individual differences.  A child’s success at school is based on where they are stratified.  So the higher you’re thought of by the teacher the better you do at school.  

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But the influence of coursework also might have something to do with the stereotyping and labelling.  Many people find it better than the actual exams and think they would not pass if there was no coursework but for some people it is just extra work.  It became implemented in the 1988 Educational Act, when it was possible to complete a whole exam subject with it.  But since then, the proportion of coursework has been scaled down.  Girl’s success over boys is down to the “feminisation” of the education system rather than the culture of “laddism”, the head of a ...

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