Thanks for this interesting rundown. I'm wondering whether any possible changes in assessment features and procedures may have contributed to the changing achievement patterns. I'd need to look back, but can remember research from 30 years or so ago - here in Australia, and maybe more generally - which showed that girls do better in assessment regimes which favour more coursework. As against boys, who generally do better in a more knowledge/'fact'-based and exam driven system. Just a thought.
Thanks, Susan – this gets at a mechanism I didn’t investigate in the post, and it’s a plausible one. So plausible, in fact, that commentators warned about exactly this in 2017, when the reformed GCSEs shifted away from coursework towards terminal exams: Alan Smithers, for one, predicted the move to end-of-course examination would narrow the gender gap. The evidence broadly fits the research you’re remembering – girls tend to come out ahead however you assess them, but their advantage is wider on coursework than on exams (though coursework was usually only a modest slice of the final grade).
The parallel shift from modular, retakeable papers to higher-stakes terminal ones may have played a part too; the same thing happened at A level, where going back to linear exams coincided with a narrowing of the gap. It’s interesting that when girls pull ahead the assessment method tends to get blamed and changed – yet when the gap closes at their expense, there’s rarely much of an outcry. As ever, though, it’s complicated – especially around the pandemic years – and it’s likely several factors are interacting, not least the divergence in wellbeing the HBSC data hints at.
Thanks for this interesting rundown. I'm wondering whether any possible changes in assessment features and procedures may have contributed to the changing achievement patterns. I'd need to look back, but can remember research from 30 years or so ago - here in Australia, and maybe more generally - which showed that girls do better in assessment regimes which favour more coursework. As against boys, who generally do better in a more knowledge/'fact'-based and exam driven system. Just a thought.
Thanks, Susan – this gets at a mechanism I didn’t investigate in the post, and it’s a plausible one. So plausible, in fact, that commentators warned about exactly this in 2017, when the reformed GCSEs shifted away from coursework towards terminal exams: Alan Smithers, for one, predicted the move to end-of-course examination would narrow the gender gap. The evidence broadly fits the research you’re remembering – girls tend to come out ahead however you assess them, but their advantage is wider on coursework than on exams (though coursework was usually only a modest slice of the final grade).
The parallel shift from modular, retakeable papers to higher-stakes terminal ones may have played a part too; the same thing happened at A level, where going back to linear exams coincided with a narrowing of the gap. It’s interesting that when girls pull ahead the assessment method tends to get blamed and changed – yet when the gap closes at their expense, there’s rarely much of an outcry. As ever, though, it’s complicated – especially around the pandemic years – and it’s likely several factors are interacting, not least the divergence in wellbeing the HBSC data hints at.
Thanks for the reply. Undoubtedly, it’s multi causal and still playing out.