What today’s A-level results reveal about boys

In her first speech as Chancellor, Rachel Reeves made much of being the first woman to hold that position. ‘To every young woman and girl,’ she said, ‘let today show that there should be no ceilings on your ambitions.’ Britain has already had three female prime ministers, two female foreign secretaries and six female home secretaries – so what makes Reeves think that girls and young women have low ambitions? This week’s A-level results and accompanying university offers will show that it’s the boys she should be more worried about.

For every 100 girls who secure a university place this week, about 75 boys will do the same. Why should that be? Look at the most prestigious courses and the gender gap deepens. On law and medical courses, for every 100 girls who are enrolled, just 57 boys are. In subjects such as maths there is a heavy bias towards boys (173 for every 100 girls) but in vocational degrees that lead into high-paid professions, women are dominant and more likely to graduate with a first-class degree. The dropout rate for male students is also higher.

The news headlines will declare that a slightly greater share of the boys who do sit A-levels attain As or A*s. But what no one seems to talk about is why so many more boys opt out of taking such exams at all. Typically, about 85,000 more A-levels are taken by girls than by boys. As a result the higher-
education entry rate is now around 43 per cent for girls vs 32 per cent for boys.

When Mary Curnock Cook ran UCAS, the university admission service, she raised this matter. One factor, she said, could be a potential lack of male role models in a country where 13-year-olds are significantly more likely to own a smartphone than to have their father still living at home.