Girls increase GCSE lead ‘because they are cleverer’

Since the exams started 40 years ago females have beaten males – now they have gone further ahead

GIRLS are expected to increase their lead over male peers in GCSE results, as an expert says that we should “just accept that females are cleverer”.

Today, half a million teenagers are to receive their results, which will be based on teachers’ predicted grades after exams were cancelled for the second year in a row due to the pandemic.

It is expected that the proportion of top grades will be higher than in 2020 and significantly higher than 2019, the last year of proper examinations.

A report, published today by Buckingham University’s Centre for Education and Employment, forecasts that girls will cement their lead overall and in individual subjects even more firmly.

Prof Alan Smithers, the author, said there had not been much difference between boys’ and girls’ grades in the old O-level but ever since the creation of the GCSE almost 40 years ago females have consistently outperformed males.

“This was explained as being due to the new modular structure of GCSES, which favoured the consistent and conscientious application of girls, in contrast to boys who showed up best in final exams,” the report said.

“When GCSES were reformed, however, to become more like O-levels, the girls’ lead was dented only slightly.

Now, with teacher assessment, girls have gone further ahead and it has been suggested this is because teachers favour them.”

A series of reforms, by Michael Gove, former education secretary, began from 2017 and these led to a slight narrowing of the gap between boys and girls.

Under the reforms, coursework was scrapped and more emphasis was placed on the final exams – a move which appeared to favour boys.

However, Prof Smithers said: “Girls have long been ahead in school work, but the tendency has been to explain away their superior performance.

“When they did better in the 11-plus, it was said that they matured earlier, when they leapt ahead in GCSES it was said that it was because they worked harder, and now with teacher assessment the impression is that they are favoured by the teachers. Why can’t we just accept that they are cleverer?”

The gap between private and state schools is also expected to widen this year, reflecting a trend seen in this week’s A-level results. Neil Roskilly, of the Independent Schools Association, said it was a “desperate shame” that state school results would be worse, but this was a “long-term issue”.

He said if the Government wants to see improved results at state schools, it needs to invest in them. This has been particularly apparent during the past year when private schools successfully pivoted to a remote learning set-up during lockdowns, while some state schools struggled to cope, he explained.

Perhaps the class of A-level students who just got their results are the best students ever. If you read the headlines in most news media that is certainly the impression you might take away. As the BBC reported on Tuesday: “Top grades for A-level results for England, Wales and Northern Ireland have reached a record high – with 44.8 per cent getting A* or A grades.” In slightly Pravda-like style, the report went on: “This second year of replacement results after exams were cancelled, has seen even higher results than last year when 38.5 per cent achieved top grades.” We can expect similar of the GCSE results released today.

You have to tread carefully here, not least because we risk treading on the sufferings as well as the dreams of a generation of young people. There is no doubt that many will have worked exceptionally hard for these results, and deserve the university places that they will go on to.

It is also the case that the past 18 months has disrupted their education in a fashion which is unprecedented in peacetime. Many schools adapted well to the era of lockdowns, doing what they could to keep a semblance of normality in place. But many others (especially in parts of the state sector where class sizes are bigger and resources more stretched) allowed pupils to roam alone, and effectively miss months of their education.

Almost a quarter of students were still absent from school at the end of the last school year, victims among much else of the system whereby everybody must isolate if one child in their bubble tests positive for Covid. And of course all this has consequences. A study published in April found that the average primary school pupil was already about two months behind in the usual reading skills, and three months behind in maths. Inevitably, better-off parents have been able to buy their children some of the way out of this. Equally inevitably it is poorer children who have suffered the most and will continue to suffer from this disadvantage throughout their lives.

Still the official narrative rolls on. Higher exam scores – and yet higher! Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, is among the many politicians touring the airwaves praising all the students who have achieved their record grades. No politician wants to be seen to be dampening the jubilation, or doubting students’ personal success. They tread in dangerous territory here, mined very comprehensively by parents and teaching unions alike.

But it means that there is a feeling of unreality in the air. After the unprecedented interruption of a generation’s education, the greatest scores ever have been achieved. “Hurrah!” is the only thing anyone is expected to say. And any sceptical note is portrayed as an attack on students. Who knows, perhaps in time we will have to reflect that if students do this well after spending over a year out of school, what might they not achieve if they never went near a classroom?

Everybody involved seems to be living in a bubble. But if there is a reason why the bubble is not pricked, it is not just out of sensitivity to pupils, but because to prick one part of the bubble is to prick it all.

For the same story rolls out in every sector of our national life. The news tells us of economic recovery, and politicians, among others, continuously talk up every uptick in economic activity. But it could hardly be otherwise. Last year the British economy was effectively shuttered. In one of the most disastrously swift wealth transfers in history, small and medium-sized businesses were made to close their doors while a handful of corrupt, tax-dodging megaliths took up all the remaining opportunity and became bigger still.

Elsewhere, millions of British workers were supported by the largesse of the British taxpayer, thanks to a government forced to take on unprecedented levels of peacetime debt in order to keep its citizens locked up in their houses. How could the period after that not be an improvement of sorts?

Much less focused on is the question of how – or if – we are ever going to pay down this debt. Or rein in this unreal era of public spending. There must be tax hikes ahead. Or at least some measure to make up for what has happened in the past year and a half. But wherever you look it is hard to find anyone willing to be honest about the problem or the potential answers. Instead we have only good news stories about projected growth and optimistic forecasts.

Whichever aspect of the “return to normality” that you look to, the same thing is happening. We are told that people are returning to the office. So much for that. On the day of the alleged big reopening last month very little, if anything, seemed to change. JP Morgan announced that it was going to maintain a 50 per cent occupancy limit at its English offices. Bank of America said it was expecting only a few hundred staff to return. And Deutsche Bank announced that employees could return over the summer on a strictly voluntary basis.

Predictably, the behaviour of the public sector makes the private sector look positively daredevil. Once again this week there was news of ministers trying to coax the civil service back into offices. Unsurprisingly, many civil servants are perfectly happy remaining well paid while working from home. At moments like this it can be enormously advantageous to pull the equivalent of a giant sickie and claim that returning to your soulsapping government building is just too stressful because of fears of coronavirus.

You may be young, healthy and double-vaccinated, but if you give people the choice many will amazingly not vote for a life back to the old commute and water-cooler thrills of office life. This week’s news suggested that in the near future, civil servants might return to work for a stunning two days a week. Meaning that for them, the working week is effectively inverted from what it used to be. Now it will be two days in the office, followed by five days in the garden to recuperate.

So don’t blame the students. It isn’t just exams that have entered a fantasy world. They are just some of the prizes being given out by a country stuck in wonderland.