Boys, Girls and Grades:
Executive Summary

Who does better in school: boys or girls? Earlier in the decade much was written about the disadvantages that girls faced in the classroom. More recently it has been suggested that, in fact, it is the boys who are getting short-changed. Importantly, we find no conclusive evidence in the research that suggests that boys and girls are destined to achieve at different levels in any aspect of the academic program. Further, the provincial Ministry of Education and the British Columbia Teachers' Federation both assert that in British Columbia's public schools the individual characteristics of students--including, presumably, their gender--are taken into account by teachers and by counsellors. So, by nature and by policy, boys and girls should achieve the same levels of academic success. But do they?

To answer this question, we first analyzed student performance across the province in the eight most popular Grade-12 academic courses. The results show that girls and boys do not, on average, fair equally well in our secondary schools. However, an important question remains: Are girls actually learning more or are school-based assessments systematically biased against boys?

The final mark on these academic courses is a combination of a uniform provincial examination mark and a mark awarded by a student's school. On the provincial examinations, girls have consistently out-performed boys in English 12. In Mathematics 12, where girls previously trailed boys on the provincial examination results, the gap has been closed. These examination results offer some evidence that girls are actually performing at a higher level than are boys in these critical subject areas. Even so, on five of the eight most frequently written provincial examinations boys have, on average, outperformed girls over the period of this study.

Analysis of the school-based marks shows an entirely different picture. Even though final examination results do not conclusively favour boys or girls, girls consistently earn higher average school marks on all eight of these same courses (see graph below). So, regardless of how they do relative to boys on the examinations, girls are consistently receiving higher marks at school. What are our schools measuring?

Other performance indicators--graduation rate and the proportion of each gender enrolled in specific courses--suggest that much improvement is needed in efforts by schools to maximize the potential of all students regardless of their gender.

When we examine the results from individual schools, we find that they are not equally effective in their efforts to take the needs of both genders into account. It is apparent that, while some school professionals have found success in this important endeavour, many more are either unsuccessful or, perhaps, unaware of the problem.

The results of this study suggest that every secondary school administrator in the province should consider these questions:

1. What programs do we have in place to ensure that the unique educational needs of both boys and girls are being met?
2. How successful are these programs?
3. What additional steps can we take to enable students of both genders to reach their potential?
4. Are the school-based assessments an accurate measure of each student's understanding of the curriculum?

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Last Modified: Thursday, May 20, 1999.