AIBU to be annoyed that the BBC and other news outlets are saying that boys outperformed girls at A level when it simply isn’t true?

[Putneydad7]

journalists have jumped on the statistic that boys had a slightly higher percentage performance in the A/A whilst barely or not mentioning that girls got way more A&A than boys. Only because 20% of boys (the less academic ones typically) dont do a levels then it skews the %ages.
60,000 more girls than boys do A levels. So while we are all patting ourselves on the back saying haven’t the boys done well, crisis over, this patently isn’t true. Maybe the journalists should go back and do some a level maths themselves.
Right rant over

You're quoting a headline. This is why people can't get their news from headlines. A handful of SEO-friendly words can't tell a whole story.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz931kvldg4o

This is the bit you need:

4. Boys take the lead in top grades
Boys have outperformed girls at A-level for the first time since 2018.
Of boys' grades, 28.4% were awarded an A* or A – compared to 28.2% of girls' grades.
So boys have a 0.2 percentage point lead. That's a switch from last year, when they were 0.4 percentage points behind girls.
Some of this could be down to what's been going on across individual subjects.
For example, boys increased their lead over girls in maths - the most popular A-level subject with more than 100,000 entries.
Boys' performance in maths improved very slightly this year (from 42.5% of entries being marked A* or A last year to 42.6% this year), whereas girls' dipped (from 41.2% last year to 40.2% this year).
However, girls still outperformed boys in more subjects.

Or on the say so of some journalists 🤣

It's true that statistical reporting is generally terrible. Journalists aren't the only ones who don't understand how to interpret statistics.

For instance, there are headlines in the Erin Patterson case saying that there are more female poisoners than male poisoners. Whereas the opposite is true.

But journalists have taken the fact that female murderers are more likely to use poison as a weapon and run with that, whereas in fact men commit the vast majority of murders, and more people are poisoned by men than by women.

Yeah I thought this was honestly odd given how long girls have been consistently outperforming boys. The source I read did have the second bit of info in the small print but I also thought it was while technically true, also quite misleading in a way. Thought it was interesting that so many more boys are moving to things like maths, physics and economics (pretty much what my own son ended up doing swapping in business for economics only because he didn’t have a high enough English GCSE grade to do economics at his school). And thinking about how rubbish my son is in many humanities essay based subjects, which may also be more coursework as opposed to exam focussed, which I think is not atypical for boys, and where girls tend to shine much more, I think it’s very understandable. We all know it’s harder in reality to reliably hit an A star in eg art or music or English or even philosophy or whatever, because of it being much more subjective so people are hardly ever going to get 100 percent no matter how good it is, compared to the sort of very factual maths and science type subjects where if you answer all the sums correctly you will get 100 percent fair and square.

I completely agree. The amount of misinformation that is EVERYWHERE because both the media and the general public have no basic grasp of statistics or data interpretation is shocking. Knowing the difference between Correlation vs Causation when looking at graphs is also another one. People struggle to understand per capita figures as well.

The headline is accurate. Using raw numbers instead of percentages would be a daft metric to use when comparing two groups.

It'd be like saying that English students outperformed Welsh ones by a huge margin...because there are loads more students in England (when Welsh students did better on average).

Not only a very petty thread, but wrong-headed to boot.

it was brought up by my son who is 16, he saw it on TikTok and I told him to check it on a reliable news source and that’s when it was brought to my attention, he was being smug about it!

There is a crisis in boys’ education, they are falling further behind girls every year. The point is that headlines like this take focus away from the issue of closing the attainment gap by trying to get the boys to catch up.

As a school governor yes I cared then and it was raised at several meetings when we discussed how to help boys catch up and the issues being faced in classrooms of the disruption caused by boys who are being left behind.

You're being unreasonable to expect rational, fact based journalism from the BBC.

Well clearly the boys are now not behind so surely we should be congratulating them rather than the usual male bashing on here?

Yes as soon as I read it was about A-levels I thought what a useless statistic because only a proportion of people go on to do A-levels if they are generally more academic anyway.

I can’t believe some people think it’s ok to not give correct facts and statistics. Wow!

That's not the point. The statistics don't take away from any individual boys achievement. They exist to show us patterns and trends so we get an insight into any issues that may need addressing. If there are discrepancies between the academic achievements of the sexes that needs reporting accurately. Not so 'boy mums' or 'girl mums' get to 'have this one', but so we understand if there's a problem and we need to make changes or target efforts differently towards girls or boys so neither are disproportionately failed by the system.

This is the problem right here. Ordinary people getting sucked into pitting our boys and girls against each other. Loving parents talking about academic attainment in terms of 'wins'. This nonsense has leaked out of the manosphere and into everyday life.

But people are saying the headline is correct if you are not looking at one metric. Different metrics give different results.

Of course it matters. It matters that journalists use statistics, and it matters what those statistics are, because statistics like these drive changes in focus in schools.

Those 'boy mums' wanting the boys to have a win, do you want the education system to say 'Right - boys are now achieving equally with girls, so we can stop looking at ways to increase engagement and attainment in boys'? And ignore the fact that 60,000 fewer boys are even taking A Levels?

Massaging the truth doesn't actually help anyone in the long run.

I agree OP. You had to read the BBC article pretty carefully to understand that, taken as a whole (rather than just the ones who sat A levels), girls are still doing better than boys at college age academic qualifications.
I’m sure if my 14 yo son read it, he’d have a little brag about boys being better than girls

Why does it matter?

That's why I take no notice of stats. Remember the one about Muhammad being the most popular boys name? Only because virtually every Muslim boy is called Muhammad. You could have 10 boys called
Muhammad
Bob
Dave
Ed
Steve
John
Paul
Ringo
George
Muhammad.
10 boys, 2 called Muhammad and therefore Muhammad is the most popular.
Same with these exam results. It's all in the numbers.

See my post above. It does matter. Schools act on these things. Policies are driven by them. Funding goes into them.

We live in a time of clickbait. A metric that has changed since last year is more likely to get a click than metrics that are the same as last year.

I agree that journalists are often weak on statistical reporting and I think that yabu to assume that the BBC would be a reliable source.

To me it's just the usual headline seeking on results day, when there isn't much of material difference to report on. It's pretty much the same every year, with small variations.

Exactly.

Ignore the siences just teach them to walk without dragging their knuckles as they stumble about. They are after all simply going to grow up to be rapist thugs.

Gospel according to mumsnet

I find it frankly fucking bizarre that anyone gives a shit about the correlation between genitalia and attainment.
They worked hard, they did well. ALL our kids deserve a big bear hug of pride for their attainment- not pitting them against each other in some sort of bizarre battle of the sexes.
So the media can get in the bin with their stupid statistics of division.
Well done everyone.