Girls lead boys in academic achievement globally

Researchers at the University of Missouri and the University of Glasgow in Scotland, have determined that girls outperform boys in educational achievement in 70 percent of the countries they studied-- regardless of the level of gender, political, economic or social equality.

"We studied the educational achievement levels of 1.5 million 15-year-olds from around the world using data collected between 2000 and 2010," said David Geary, Curators Professor of Psychological Sciences in the College of Arts and Science at MU, Science Daily reported.

According to the data, boys fall behind girls in overall achievement across reading, mathematics, and science in 70 percent of the countries studied. The one exception worldwide is among students in economically developed nations where high achieving boys outperform high achieving girls, researchers said.

"With the exception of high-achievers, boys have poorer educational outcomes than girls around the world, independent of social equality indicators," said Gijsbert Stoet, reader in psychology at the University of Glasgow.

"Results show that a commitment to gender equality on its own is not enough to close the achievement gaps in global education; the gap is not increasing.

Although it is vital that we promote gender equality in schools, we also need to make sure that we're doing more to understand why these gaps, especially among boys, persist and what other policies we can develop to close them." The study also has important implications for educational policy, the researchers said.