Minding the gender gap

Boys are behind girls: at primary school, secondary school and at university. In the UK, white working-class boys have long been at the bottom of the heap in terms of attainment, but these days boys of all backgrounds are underperforming relative to girls. Last year, girls got two-thirds of the new top grade 9 scores at GCSE, while just 32 per cent of boys applied for university, compared with 44 per cent of girls.

It’s not just in Britain either. Across the OECD countries, a study has found that 15-year-old boys are 50 per cent more likely than girls to fail to meet the baseline standards in reading, maths and science.

So the question is why? How do boys and girls differ in their approach to learning? And what are schools doing to help boys learn effectively?

First, though — a caveat. There are, of course, many extremely diligent, hard-working boys, and many girls who aren’t.