Achievement Patterns Across All School Stages

Girls have been smashing it academically from day one of their school journey. Teacher assessments in Year 1 show girls ahead of boys by 7-17 percentage points across all subjects, and they're also better at concentrating in class.

This advantage doesn't disappear as they get older - it actually gets stronger. Throughout Key Stages 1-3, girls consistently outperform boys, especially in English where the gap keeps widening. Even in traditionally "male" subjects like maths and science, girls still come out on top.

The GCSE gender gap sits at about 10 percentage points, with English showing the biggest difference - 70% of girls achieve A*-C grades compared to just 54% of boys. At A-level, girls are more likely to sit exams, pass them, and get higher grades, with 47% achieving A or B grades versus 42% of boys.

Key Point: Girls don't just do better at "girly" subjects - they outperform boys in maths and physics too, showing this isn't about natural ability differences.

How Society Changed the Game for Girls

Feminism completely transformed what girls thought they could achieve. Angela McRobbie's research shows that girls' magazines in the 1970s were obsessed with getting married, but now they celebrate independent, assertive women who don't need rescuing.

Girls' ambitions have done a complete 180. Sue Sharpe found that in the 1970s, girls thought being too academic was unfeminine and would put boys off. By the 1990s, girls prioritised careers and saw educational qualifications as essential for supporting themselves.

Family changes like rising divorce rates and more single-parent households mean girls see financially independent women as role models. Meanwhile, boys often lack male role models at home, which some sociologists argue contributes to their underachievement.

Think About It: The decline of heavy industries like mining and shipbuilding has left many boys feeling there are no "proper jobs" for them anymore, undermining their motivation to get qualifications.

Critics Challenge the External Explanations

Not everyone's convinced these social changes tell the whole story. McRobbie's magazine research is over 20 years old, and media has transformed massively since then - we just don't know how Instagram and TikTok are shaping girls' attitudes today.

Class differences matter too. Diane Reay discovered that working-class girls still often have traditional aspirations focused on marriage and children, expecting to end up in low-paid "women's work" rather than high-flying careers.

The labour market argument also has holes. Critics point out that the jobs disappearing were mainly manual, working-class roles that didn't require qualifications anyway. So why would losing these jobs affect boys' motivation to study?

Assessment changes might be the real game-changer. The gender gap stayed pretty constant until 1989 when GCSEs introduced coursework as a major component. Girls excel at coursework because they're more organised, meet deadlines better, and take more care with presentation.

Reality Check: The introduction of coursework coinciding with the widening gender gap suggests changes in how we assess students might matter more than broader social transformations.

What's Happening Inside Schools

School marketisation has made girls the golden ticket for head teachers. League tables mean schools desperately want high-achieving pupils, and girls deliver better exam results. This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy - girls get into better schools and therefore achieve even more.

Some argue education has become "feminised", celebrating traditionally feminine qualities like methodical working and quiet attentiveness whilst ignoring masculine traits like competitiveness. This supposedly makes boys feel undervalued and contributes to their underachievement.

Laddish subcultures put massive pressure on boys not to appear too academic. Working-class boys face harassment and homophobic abuse if they're seen as "swots" because masculinity in their culture is associated with toughness and manual work, not academic success.

The curriculum has also been de-gendered since the 1980s. Weiner argues that removing sexist images from textbooks and challenging stereotypes has helped girls see more positive role models of what women can achieve.

Cultural Pressure: Boys face a cruel choice between academic success and social acceptance, whilst girls can be both popular and high-achieving without the same cultural backlash.

Evaluating the School-Based Explanations

Coursework critics like Elwood argue it can't be the whole story because exams still carry much more weight than coursework in final grades. If coursework was the main factor, we'd expect to see bigger differences between subjects with lots of coursework versus those that are mainly exam-based.

The feminisation argument ignores the fact that boys still dominate classroom discussions and demand more teacher attention. Some researchers suggest girls might actually be underachieving relative to their potential, just not compared to boys.

Marketisation works both ways - whilst schools want high-achieving girls, they're also put off by boys who are four times more likely to be excluded and more prone to behavioural problems. This creates additional barriers for boys trying to access good schools.

Francis supports Epstein's work on laddish cultures, finding that being labelled a "swot" threatens boys' masculinity much more than girls' femininity. This cultural pressure to reject academic success particularly affects working-class boys.

Bottom Line: The gender gap in achievement results from a complex mix of changing social expectations, assessment methods, and cultural pressures that affect boys and girls differently both in and out of school.