Assessment

The attainment Gender Gap: What role do O levels, GCSEs and Teacher Assessed Grades play?

Girls’ superior performance at GCSE level has long been known. Indeed, the gender gap for those achieving the highest grades has grown steadily since the 1980s. It peaked in 2021 under pandemic-enforced Teacher Assessed Grades, but fell with the return of exams. So what do the gender gap statistics tell us about the different ways in which boys and girls learn in class, perform in assessments and are perceived by teachers? In this blog we look at factors that lie behind the issue and try to find an answer.

Date31/08/23

AuthorAQi team

Do learning styles differ between genders?
photo: Dainis Graveris/Unsplash

On GCSE results day Claire Thomson, AQA’s director of regulation and compliance, said identifying the cause of the phenomenon that sees female students outperform males would be speculation, but could be about societal expectations, differences in attitudes to work or even maturity levels.

Importantly, she added that this year’s GCSE and A level students should be “confident in the knowledge they have been assessed fairly and, really critically, importantly, when we are talking about males and females, they have been assessed anonymously.”

The recent growth of the gender gap in attainment

Examining the possible causes of the attainment gender gap takes us back to 1986 when GCSEs replaced O levels.

The new qualification differed from its predominantly exam-based predecessor in that it was more modular.

How has the gender gap in attainment changed over the years?

They were adapted over the years to contain more assessed coursework until Michael Gove’s reforms returned them back to a more linear model.

In 1989, the gender gap at the then highest grade A (A* was not introduced until 1994) was 1.5 percentage points in favour of girls. Some 24 years later it is 5.8pp at the equivalent grade 7 and above.

How did Teacher Assessed Grades affect the gender gap in attainment?

Although this is massive growth, it is not the biggest gap there has been.
In 2021, the pandemic forced the suspension of exams and the use of Teacher Assessed Grades (TAGs) instead.

This reversed two years of the gap narrowing to send it to an all-time high of 9pp for the highest achieving students.

Did the return to exam conditions affect the attainment gender gap?

Interestingly, returning to full exam conditions sent it back down.

Achievement by 16-year-olds by gender in England - Source EPI/JCQ

Why GCSEs and Teacher Assessed Grades affected the gender gap

These startling statistics prompt two questions: Why did the gender gap grow so much after O levels were replaced and why did it grow faster with Teacher Assessed Grades?

Research appears to show that the introduction and nature of GCSEs could be part of the reason girls pulled away so dramatically.

O levels relied heavily on exams – which is said to suit boys’ style of studying – while the new qualification had more supposedly girl-friendly coursework until 2015 when Michael Gove’s GCSE reforms came into practice. The first exams under this system were in 2017.

Do boys and girls perform differently in exam conditions

The idea that boys perform better in traditional testing seems to be supported by statistics showing that, in 2018 and 2019, the attainment gap narrowed.

This connects nicely to research suggesting girls perform better at coursework.

Gender Gap in UK at Grade 7/A and Above source: Uni of Buckingham CEER

To back this up, attainment gap statistics reveal that the downward trend reversed when exams were suspended and the gap for the highest grades – 7/8/9 – grew from 2.5pp to 9pp in 2021 under TAGs.

Now pre-pandemic exam conditions are back, the trend has reversed again to 5.8pp – lower than 2019’s 6.5pp.

Why did girls get higher marks under Teacher Assessed Grades?

Another interesting statistic from TAGs was that in 2021, girls gained more top grades than boys in all but three subjects – physics, statistics and ‘other sciences’ (such as Environmental Science). In 2019 it was seven and this year five.

Getting to the bottom of this shift is complex.

Why do the different genders perform differently in assessments?

Some say teachers making those grade assessments may be more well-disposed to girls because generally, they mature earlier, have better verbal skills and are less disruptive in class.

There are also the gender stereotypes for studying styles that may have fed into teachers’ thinking.

Girls are said to perform better because they work on a more consistent basis rather than boys who are seen to cram before exams rather than study evenly throughout the year.

This may feed a subconscious perception that females are the better students.
Indeed, an Ofqual study found that in some subjects internally-set, internally-marked coursework benefited girls.

Teachers and students are not blind to the issue.

What studies into Teacher Assessed Grades show about the gender gap?

In post GCSE results interviews in 2021, teachers involved in handing out the TAGs said it was harder to determine grades for those with “inconsistent performance” - could that be the stereotype boy student who needs exams to close in before putting in the real effort?

One teacher said they had “lazy but smart” male students who “probably would have done better if they’d have been sitting an exam, because they would have risen to the occasion.”

Some students feared that personal relationships with teachers could affect their judgement – it would be easy to think the disruptive element may be judged most harshly.

Ofqual looked into divergence between teacher and test-based assessment and found that bias in teacher-assessed results in favour of girls or against boys was indeed more common than no bias or bias in favour of boys.

What we learnt about the gender gap from Teacher Assessed Grades?

So where does all of this leave us?

What we can take away from the experiment with TAGs is that they inadvertently exacerbated the gender attainment gap.

It reinforces the argument that the least unfair way to assess a student’s level of attainment is through anonymised, well-designed, and expertly marked exams.

Whether you arrive at school in a Bentley or 143 bus, once inside the exam hall everyone is level.

But let’s leave the last word to one of the students who took part in the 2021 Ofqual post GCSE interviews.

“I’d prefer to have just sat the exam and then everyone’s on the same thing, everyone’s in the same situation.

Education Policy

Through the looking glass: How polling the public can help policymakers learn about themselves

Public attitude data is key to effective policymaking. Proper polling can reveal what people think about existing policies and what they want for the future. But, if looked at from a different angle, it can also help policymakers question themselves and their assumptions about the public. In this blog, AQA’s Policy and Evidence Manager Adam Steedman-Thake, reveals the lessons he learned about himself while reading a recent public attitude survey.

Assessment

Assessing oracy: Is Comparative Judgement the answer?

Oracy skills are vital to success in school and life. And yet, for many children, opportunities to develop them are missed. Educationalists are engaging in a growing debate about where oracy fits into the school system. Labour has put it at the heart of its plans to improve social mobility and an independent commission is looking at how it is taught in the classroom. This renewed focus on oracy means it is more important than ever that teachers have a way to reliably assess and understand their students’ attainment and progression. Amanda Moorghen of oracy education charity Voice 21 explains how Comparative Judgement can help with that and why it may be a game changer.

Education

TV subtitles as an aid to literacy: What does the research say?

Jack Black is probably best known in educational circles for playing a renegade substitute teacher in School of Rock. But the Hollywood star has made a more conventional foray into education by backing the use of TV subtitles to improve child literacy. Stephen Fry and the World Literacy Foundation also want parents to use their TV remotes to get children reading. So, could this simple click of a button be a solution to boost pupils’ reading skills? AQA’s resident expert on language teaching, Dr Katy Finch, casts her eye over the research to see whether it stacks up.

Data Analysis

What is left behind now education’s Data Wave has receded?

Is data the solution to all education’s issues? About a decade ago the prevailing wisdom said it was. Advocates of this Data Wave argued that harvesting internal statistics would help schools solve issues such as teacher accountability and attainment gaps. As with all waves, after crashing onto the beach they recede, leaving space for another to roll in. In this blog, teacher, author and data analyst Richard Selfridge looks at the legacy of the Data Wave to see what schools can take from it.

International Approaches

Finland & PISA – A fall from grace but still a high performer?

Finland was once recognised as one of the most successful educational systems in the world. At the turn of the millennium, it topped the PISA rankings in reading, maths and science. But by 2012, decline set in. The last set of results showed performances in maths, reading and science were at an all-time low. In this blog Dr Jonathan Doherty of Leeds Trinity University outlines some reasons that may account for the slide.

Briefing

PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS: What actually are they and what do they tell us?

According to the latest PISA results, England’s science scores are still on a downward trajectory that started a decade ago. Yet TIMSS, another respected study, has science performances rising. Which of them is right? Is one more valid than the other? In this blog AQi examines three International Large-Scale Assessments and finds that, although they may look the same from a distance, get up close and you’ll find they are very different beasts.

Adaptive Assessment

Adaptive Assessment: A missing ingredient in the resit recipe?

The number of students resitting their maths GCSE is growing, but the proportion getting a grade 4 or higher is falling. This situation is not only dispiriting for the young people striving to get the qualifications they need, but also for the teachers working hard to help them. How can outcomes for this cohort be improved? Bart Crisp, associate director at the Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education, thinks adaptive assessment may be part of the solution.

SEND

Student success: Every milestone matters

Baroness Morgan is calling for students to be given ‘self-belief’ lessons as a way of developing their characters and preparing them for the future. She is not the first to notice that a student’s sense of their own ability and their level of success are part of a virtuous circle. But how can teachers get the snowball rolling for students with SEND or in alternative provision? In this blog, former headteacher, John Tomsett, pulls out a swimming certificate he earned more than half a century ago to use as an inspiration for others.

Assessment

Progress 8 – How much can it flex?

Progress 8 has come in for criticism in recent months for the way it combines with the Ebacc to skew schools’ focus towards academic subjects at the expense of creative and technical options. Both Labour and a Lords committee have called for reform to boost uptake of declining subjects such as D&T, dance and drama. In the second of two blogs looking at Progress 8, AQi examines whether the accountability measure could be realigned to address these concerns and if so, how could that be done?

Assessment

Progress 8 – Schools’ flexible friend?

Eight years after Progress 8 came into existence it is facing calls to be updated. Some say reforming the schools accountability measure can halt the decline in take up of the arts, while others want it to boost numbers taking vocational and technical subjects. Are its shoulders broad enough to take on such a load? In the first of two blogs on Progress 8, AQi looks at how it came into being, what problems it was designed to solve and whether it is flexible enough to be reformed.

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The attainment Gender Gap: What role do O levels, GCSEs and Teacher Assessed Grades play?

The recent growth of the gender gap in attainment

How has the gender gap in attainment changed over the years?

How did Teacher Assessed Grades affect the gender gap in attainment?

Did the return to exam conditions affect the attainment gender gap?

Why GCSEs and Teacher Assessed Grades affected the gender gap

Do boys and girls perform differently in exam conditions

Why did girls get higher marks under Teacher Assessed Grades?

Why do the different genders perform differently in assessments?

What studies into Teacher Assessed Grades show about the gender gap?

What we learnt about the gender gap from Teacher Assessed Grades?

Through the looking glass: How polling the public can help policymakers learn about themselves

Assessing oracy: Is Comparative Judgement the answer?

TV subtitles as an aid to literacy: What does the research say?

What is left behind now education’s Data Wave has receded?

Finland & PISA – A fall from grace but still a high performer?

PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS: What actually are they and what do they tell us?

Adaptive Assessment: A missing ingredient in the resit recipe?

Student success: Every milestone matters

Progress 8 – How much can it flex?

Progress 8 – Schools’ flexible friend?

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Download a PDF version.

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