Anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? Boys outperform girls at A Level

[musicalfrog]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62707l4lwvo

It's the BBC. How do we know what they even mean by boys and girls?

I hate that I can't trust them.

When it comes to things like reporting violent crimes as being committed by women, then I'm immediately suspicious.

But in this case, I think it's more likely to be factors such as the rise in popularity of maths as an A level choice, particularly among boys.

Are they using sex or gender as a measuring tool though?

Knowing the social contagion to identify as boys among teenaged girls.

Hopefully not enough to skew the figures, but how would we know?

Ah I get you! Interesting. I've been a teacher 20 years and most of this there has been the hand wringing of questioning why boys' results are poorer than girls and how disengaged boys have become.

There's now multiple entire reading schemes (primary) that are targeted for boys' interests and trying to ensure interdisciplinary topics covered are interesting for boys.

Maybe this is now being reflected in results 🤷🏼‍♀️

Or perhaps it could be that the general rise in sexism among boys in this age group is having an impact on girls' confidence. What we believe about ourselves has a huge impact on our success.

It’s been over a decade since I worked at an exam board, so my knowledge of results standardisation is not up to date, but the girls outperforming boys is not new. For a large part of the 20th century the girls’ results were adjusted down because they were outperforming the boys consistently and across the board, and it wasn’t considered socially acceptable to let those results stand. It was particularly marked in the early part of the century when only grammar and public schools were sitting exams.

For generations, boys were wrongly told they were academically more able as a birthright, and society believed that as a given. It’s no wonder they are struggling with the truth.
I do not trust these statistics, as someone who used to be part of the process for my subject. They are always subject to adjustment, which is inevitably decided by a notion of what the results ‘should’ be.

I am wondering also with the proliferation of mixed schools now and the removal of many single sex facilities that benefit girls that this will have an effect. Girls do better in single sex environments but boys in mixed. Girls have a higher incidence of STEM subjects in single sex but move to more arts when surrounded by boys.

If I wanted to address the "problem" that girls outperform boys at A-level, and I knew that boys were disproportionately represented in STEM subjects and that grade boundaries can always be altered… well, that would be simple to solve.

There was a thread on one of the other boards last night - that the headline is misleading anyway. I haven’t checked the data myself but the op said that the percentages used were based on the numbers of boys and girls doing A levels, not on the total number of boys and girls in that age group. And more boys don’t take A levels - in terms of numbers more girls than boys had achieved top grades.
If you’ve excluded more of the lowest achievers from one group than another what do you expect?

That is outrageous! I hope that's no longer the case? Its outright sex discrimination.

Thanks @LaLoba really interesting. I knew that the published results showed boys outperforming girls for many years and that this was never considered a problem (or even worthy of comment) but not that the figures were fudged.

In the days of grammar schools boys were admitted with lower grades in the 11-plus but that was because far fewer girls’ grammar schools were ever established so there were many, many more places for boys.

I work for an exam board and boundaries aren't adjusted separately for each sex. Yes, boundaries are moved a bit on a year by year basis, but that's based on the distribution of scores for the cohort as a whole - if one year the paper is particularly difficult and candidates have struggled, then grade boundaries shift lower, otherwise you don't get a good distribution of candidates across all grades and the system doesn't discriminate between candidates well enough. So one year you might need 80% to get an A and the next year it might be 76%.

It's also worth noting that the difference between boys and girls this year was so small as to be basically meaningless. It's just a clickbait headline.

It was no longer the case when I was there. There was a strong argument (in my opinion) for exam papers to be anonymous to the marker so that not only the sex, but the school of the student was not known to the markers, as some of post exam work was taken up by up by identifying papers which had been unfairly marked by an individual examiner.

But the adjustment in favour of boys had effects long after it was over, not just in examiner’s expectations, but in expectations of girls, and not just what they were offered (physics not available in my all girls school), but in what they chose.

Less boys study A Levels.

So either choose more vocational career routes or have failed to achieve the grades required to do A Levels. Girls are therefore doing better academically on a broader level.

Tbh this should be the bigger story rather than the tiny difference in a levels this year.

It is done anonymously now, at least for the board I work for. Papers are scanned in, the majority of marking is done online, and examiners cannot see the name or school.

I’m very glad to read that! Once had an examiner say he’d been generous with his marking because the marks should be higher in a fee paying school, and had to clear up the mess!
I was a subject manager when we introduced online marking and standardising, despite opposition from many examiners it was a far more efficient way of working, even back in the early days.

If the suggestion is that the data from the exam boards is using gender rather than sex as a marker, I'm not sure exam boards would have that data.
Sex on the pupil data base is legal sex which would be from birth, as children can't get a gender recognition certificate. I suppose some could as soon as they turn 18 but if so, that's not going to be enough to impact the data.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/642bf367fbe620000f17dbc7/CBDS_RFC_1233_-_Sex_and_Gender_Identity.pdf

That's horrifying, @LaLoba . Do you know when they stopped adjusting grades by sex?

I seem to remember it was the 90s - after the switch from O-Levels to GCSEs - that we first started to get headlines about girls overtaking boys in exams results.

I don’t, I’m afraid, and no longer have access to the archives (imagine a basement library reminiscent of where the Ark is stored in the Indiana Jones film). It’s not something I’ve seen written about elsewhere, as it’s only girls, innit?

Girls in education have come so far after such a long period of being deliberately hamstrung, even by the institutions which are supposed to provide a level playing field. Now their achievements in such a short space of time is presented as a problem because it hurts male feelings. The entitlement makes me so angry.

That's reassuring at least.

Seems there are a lot of other areas for potential concern and I have to wonder, why does it matter if boys or girls are doing better than the other? Why is it deemed newsworthy in the first place?

(I don't mean don't record it btw, but why the news articles?)

Yes…why is that the headline rather than the more serious looking regional differences?

The shift to GCSEs was 1988 (first exams), that also marked the shift from norm based to criteria based marking (though grade boundaries are shuffled a little).

Is it that boys are less likrly to sit A levels, being more likely to be directed towards vocational training, so those that do follow an academic path get better grades?

I'm more concerned about the fact that yet again the NE is bottom of the table for results. Actually also for entering top universities. Politicians simply don't care about the children up here. Huge inequality in school funding compared to elsewhere in UK.

Yes, it seems so (according to the other thread I mentioned) but I don’t know the relative numbers of boys and girls who don’t do them.