A levels go gender neutral

[BiologyIsReal]

Daily Telegraph today. Can't see a thread on it but apologies if it has already been posted.

When will this utter tripe stop? It's as if organisations are all subject to a collective delusion.

/www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/08/14/a-levels-go-gender-neutral-leadingexam-board-allows-students/

I agree it's a myth that boys do better in exams.

Girls used to outperform boys at maths GCSE. When they scrapped maths coursework, boys started doing better than girls. It’s the only GCSE where the boys’ pass rate is higher than girls (probably due to boys’ poor literacy).

All this worry that swathes of pupils are submitting incorrect sex ID is overblown - the kids don’t provide this info to the exam board, schools do, from their own databases. If a kid wanted to change sex, they couldn’t do it frivolously by ticking a box for a laugh, they’d have to do it through the school.

Clicked the Guardian link and all becomes clear.

The purpose of boys taking the exams is to show how clever they are,and set them up for tough well paid roles in later life.

The purpose of girls taking the exams is to get some great snaps of them opening the results because girls are really nice to look at aren't they.

The Guardian now says nothing in particular about boys v girls in the text and has a bit of info in graphs and near the end.

They are obviously struggling with the write up for some reason.

Just looking at telegraph but not subscribed so only got top bit.

They lead with the usual picture of young women jumping and looking happy (bizarre).

Then boys / girls

"For the second year running, boys are winning more of the highest grades than girls, with 26.2 per cent of girls achieving As or A* compared to 26.6 per cent of boys."

Now you see,I would say that these results are the same. You are never going to get an exact match, this difference while representing quite a lot of children is still as pretty even as you could get.

So surely the headline should be - girls and boys do equally well.

This saying that one or the other "has the lead" when it's so marginal is just setting up some kind of competition / argument etc where there doesn't need to be one.

Agree that the reporting is disingenuous. More girls actually passed:

“However, girls do better across As, BCs and Cs, meaning that around 78 per cent get one of these grades. Only 75 per cent of boys achieve the same.”

schoolsweek.co.uk/a-level-2018-key-trends-results-data/

I really think it would be better for all concerned to regard fairly trivial differences as "the same" and raise flags if the difference is more significant.

Yes - a small % even 0.1% will equate to a lot of children.

But with something like this you are never going to get parity. 26.2 vs 26.6 should not be presented as "Boys on top again! Girls slip down the ladder!!!" but "boys and girls both do well with very similar rates" or somethinkg.
Doesn't make such good headlines though.

WRT top grades - some subjects have a very high percentage of top grades awarded. This year 59% of Maths grades and 29.2% of Physics grades were A/A*. Eng Lit and History were 23.9% and 23.5% respectively.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/734336/A_level_results_days_2018__2_.pdf
The subjects with the highest percentage of top grades are those more likely to be chosen by boys (older data but no evidence things have changed more recently).
www.theguardian.com/education/datablog/2015/aug/13/a-level-results-2015-gender-gap-pass-rates-subject-popularity-charts

That's really interesting and odd.

I thought it was really hard to get good grades in physics - at least that and further maths were known to be tough when I was at school but I suppose that was more than 20 years ago!

Maybe they've weighted it that way on purpose?

Although, I think it said more girls took maths this year than boys.

Maybe they just wanted to get rid of the "too hard won't bother" offputting effect from the past, to encourage more to take it up.

I think it said more girls took maths this year than boys.

Not sure where you got this from? Maths is about 60:40 boys to girls.

Some info here about relative numbers of girls and boys doing Maths/Physics - it seems that proportionally more girls got the highest grades in Physics, though there were fewer of them. And many more boys doing Maths.
www.theguardian.com/education/live/2018/aug/16/a-level-results-day-2018-students-await-results-exams-grades-tougher-courses
This is nothing new though, there were many more top grades awarded in these two subjects when I was still teaching in Secondary. Subjects like German and Latin also get very high numbers of top grades. I think the explanation is that weaker students drop out relatively early (and gatekeeping for A level Maths is pretty rigorous).

Oh weird - thought I saw it on an article earlier but must have misread.

I thought girls do better because on average they follow rules more than boys. And school learning is very rule based. (Which would also explain them doing better on coursework, where essentially you don't really do much creative work, but follow a set of instructions).

Girl brainz, eh?

Girls do better than boys at GCSE at least because of their superior literacy skills. Boys English GCSE pass rate is woefully behind that of the girls, and this will have a knock-on effect to almost every other subject (Maths is the only subject where boys do better).

Are you sure it isn't because girls are obedient little automatons with no creativity?

I thought it was really hard to get good grades in physics - at least that and further maths were known to be tough

Yes, they're tough so it tends to be more able students who take them. So more high grades are awarded than in 'soft' subjects.

still bitter wild?

Yes, they're tough so it tends to be more able students who take them. So more high grades are awarded than in 'soft' subjects.*

That makes sense. Grading on a curve would be counter productive.

I though schools were trying to persuade more girls to take STEM subjects. How can results be measured in a sea of 'prefer not to say/don't knows'?

The National Pupil Database holds M or F for gender.

Coursework, properly set and monitored, can allow any child to demonstrate their intelligence, initiative and creativity, if given the right encouragement.

Yes... there's much more scope for creativity and initiative in coursework than exams, surely? And subject-wise - while STEM disciplines require these characteristics at higher levels and in jobs - there's not much scope for them to be displayed in school exams.

Math based exams also get higher grades because it's possible to get 100% on exams whereas there isn't an equivalent for essay based exams.

Math based exams also get higher grades because it's possible to get 100% on exams whereas there isn't an equivalent for essay based exams.

I don't think that's correct; maths exams often have eyewateringly high grade boundaries for the top grades.

I've supervised coursework in Maths, Computing and ICT. In each of these my experience has been that learning has been greatly enhanced. I still think fondly of a bottom set Y8 Maths class where students were really not good at working independently. We did the coursework as a whole class exercise with input from all and guidance from me on writing it up (so "That's a really good idea. Would it make sense if we wrote it like this?"). They learned such a lot, not least about how to approach and organise their work. I learned a lot too, and they really surprised me with their insights and understanding. It helped that they were a small group (about 15), with no really disruptive elements.
Oops - well off the point of the thread, sorry.