Gender and its relation to attainment has long been a subject of debate. Here at Learning Plus UK, we have been analysing the different levels of attainment in 2011-2012 academic year throughout various key stages. With the Raising Participation Age coming into effect from September this year, it is interesting to compare how boys and girls achieve and what happens to them at Post-16.

At Key Stage 2, girls outperform boys by 5% with girls achieving 82% at Level 4 or above including English and maths compared to 77% of boys.

However, by Key Stage 4, the gap has increased to 10%, with 64% of young women achieving five or more GCSEs at A*-C, including English and mathematics, compared to 54% of young men.

At Key Stage 5, the gap narrows slightly to 7%, with 55% of young women achieving three or more A-Levels at A*-E, compared to 48% of young men.

Even though girls are performing better across the key stages, when we look at statistics on 16-24 year olds who are not in education, employment or training (NEET), we get a reverse picture with young women making up a greater proportion of the NEET category.

19% of 16-24 year-old young women and 15% of young men are NEET. Whilst if we look at the 18-24 age group the gap widens to 5% with 22% of young women and 17% of young men in the NEET category.  

As education practitioners, if we are to narrow the gap, particularly at the critical point of Key Stage 4 and 5, then we have to tackle the issue as early as possible. We also need to ask ourselves how can the gap in gender attainment double between Key Stage 2 and 4. What factors are causing this? What can schools do to re-dress the balance?

Regular monitoring of a pupil’s performance, particularly when it is benchmarked against targets can help improve every student’s prospects, whether they are boys or girls.   It can help teachers and practitioners to understand the situation in their institution and to tackle it at an early stage. 

In Learning Plus UK, we believe the role of data is to raise questions.  Currently the data for destinations at Post-16 is not available in a form which would analyse where young men and young women go.  This will be useful in understanding why young women make up a greater proportion of NEETs and whether they achieve their potential given the backdrop of their performance.  With this data we would have a fuller national picture on what’s happening in education.

For schools and colleges, it would be useful to see how you compare with some of these Big Numbers.  Does your institution exceed this level of performance for both boys and girls?  Across all key stages?  Our Post-16 Datadashboard gives schools, colleges, groups of schools and local authorities this contextual information for the Post-16 sector which can be critical to understand how students perform and how we can help them to achieve their outcomes.

Click here to view the Big Numbers infographic