WHY DO GIRLS DO BETTER ACADEMICALLY THAN BOYS?

Why are girls performing better at school than their male classmates?

1.    Girls read more than boys. Reading proficiency is the basis upon which all other learning is built. When boys don’t do well at reading, their performance in other school subjects suffers too. 

2.    Girls spend more time on homework. On average, girls spend five and a half hours per week doing homework while boys spend a little less than four and a half hours. Researchers suggest that doing homework set by teachers is linked to better performance in Mathematics, Reading and Science.

3.    Boys, it appears, spend more of their free time in the virtual world; they are 17% more likely to play collaborative online games than girls every day. They also use the internet more.

4.    Peer pressure plays a role. A lot of boys decide early on that they are just too cool for school which means they’re more likely to be rowdy in class. Teachers mark them down for this.

5.    Girls are more apt to plan ahead, set academic goals, and put effort into achieving those goals.

6.    The women's movement and feminism are well noted for the success that they have received in increasing moral, confidence, and expectations of women.

7.    Research by Sociologists and their discovery of female’s underachievement in the past has led to increased emphasis on equal opportunities in schools, colleges, and the workplace.

8.    Parents may assume boys are better at math and science so they might encourage girls to put more effort into their studies, which could lead to the slight advantage girls have in all courses, they wrote.

9.    Girls tend to study in order to understand the materials, whereas boys emphasize performance, which indicates a focus on the final grades.

What can be done to close this gap?

1.    Getting boys to do more homework and cut down on screen-time would help.

2.    Offering boys a chance to read non-fiction would help too: they’re keener on comics and newspapers.

3.    Abandoning gender stereotypes would benefit all students.

4.       In anonymous tests, boys perform better. In fact, the gender gap in reading drops by a third when teachers don’t know the gender of the pupil they are marking.