Gender and Educational Achievement
Gender and educational achievement covers the well-documented pattern that girls have, on average, outperformed boys in GCSE-level assessment for several decades, and the sociological explanations for this reversal of an older pattern in which boys did better.
Before you start
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Method
- Separate why girls have improved from why boys underachieve, since these are different, though related, explanations and each earns credit separately.
- Apply the feminist explanation: the women's movement changed attitudes towards women's careers, and legislation such as the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Equal Pay Act opened up opportunities that made qualifications matter more to girls.
- Apply Sue Sharpe's research comparing girls' priorities across different decades, showing a shift from prioritising marriage and family towards prioritising career, education and independence, which raised motivation in school.
- Apply explanations for boys' underachievement: laddish subcultures that treat academic effort as uncool or unmasculine, the decline of traditional manual employment reducing the perceived pay-off from schoolwork for some boys, and fewer male teachers as role models, especially in primary school.
- Remember gender interacts with class and ethnicity, so avoid treating girls or boys as a single group with one uniform experience.
- For a 12-mark discuss question, present the evidence and named explanations for improved female achievement, weigh them against an explanation for male underachievement or a counterpoint, then reach a conclusion.
Worked example
Discuss the view that changing attitudes towards women's careers, rather than changes inside schools, best explain the improvement in girls' educational achievement.
- Set out the case for changing attitudes: the women's movement and legislation such as the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 opened careers to women, and Sharpe's research shows girls' own priorities shifted towards careers and independence, which would raise motivation regardless of what schools did.
- Set out the alternative, school-based case: changes to teaching and assessment, and greater teacher attention to raising girls' confidence in some subjects, could also explain rising achievement, which the question asks you to weigh against.
- Compare the two cases directly: attitude change explains why girls wanted to succeed, while school-based change explains how schools may have supported that motivation once it existed, so the two arguments are not fully separate.
- Reach a conclusion: changing attitudes are the more fundamental cause because they explain the underlying shift in aspiration, while school-based factors more plausibly reinforced an existing trend rather than starting it.
Practice questions
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Q1Since when have girls, on average, outperformed boys at GCSE level?Show answer
Answer: For several decades - the pattern of girls out-performing boys became well established from the late twentieth century onwards.
Q2Name one piece of legislation from the 1970s associated with improving women's opportunities and, indirectly, girls' motivation in education.Show answer
Answer: The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (or the Equal Pay Act 1970).
Q3According to Sue Sharpe's research, how did girls' priorities change over time?Show answer
Answer: From prioritising love, marriage and husbands to prioritising career, education and independence.
Q4What is meant by a laddish anti-school subculture?Show answer
Answer: A peer culture, more common among some boys, in which academic effort is treated as unmasculine or uncool, and status is instead won through disruption or a tough image.
Q5Give one reason linked to the labour market for some boys' reduced motivation in school.Show answer
Answer: The decline of traditional manual and unskilled jobs that boys could once enter without qualifications, reducing the perceived pay-off of academic effort for some boys.
Q6Why should gender differences in achievement not be discussed as if all girls or all boys are the same?Show answer
Answer: Because gender interacts with social class and ethnicity, so patterns of achievement vary a great deal within the group of girls and within the group of boys.
Exam-style questions
Written in the style of a GCSE Sociology exam paper, with a full mark scheme.
Explain two reasons for the improvement in girls' educational achievement.
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Nothing ticked yet - 4 available
Explain, using sociological evidence, why some boys underachieve relative to girls in education.
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Nothing ticked yet - 6 available
Discuss reasons for the improvement in girls' educational achievement over recent decades. (12 marks)
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Nothing ticked yet - 12 available
See real GCSE Sociology past-paper questions, with official mark schemes →
Free printable worksheet
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