It is well known that girls outperform boys in the education system.

Such is the scale and enduring nature of the challenges facing boys, the Commons Education Select Committee made this the focus of their recent inquiry, launched in April under the former Conservative government.

As such, in the Education Policy Institute’s (EPI) latest annual report using attainment data for 2023, we took a closer look at how gender gaps emerge and evolve - and why, as detailed elsewhere on Tes today, they are actually closing.

So, what are the key trends schools should know - and what does the future hold?

Girls start ahead at school

At age 5, girls were already 3.2 months ahead of boys in 2023. This is based on a broad measure of child development capturing the areas of learning that the Department for Education considers most important for having a “good level of development”. 

Gaps are not uniform, though, and the official data indicates that in each of the last two years since the early years foundation stage was reformed in 2021, gaps are most marked (in girls’ favour) for fine motor skills, writing and self-regulation.

They are smallest for maths but even here, boys still perform less well than girls. This points to genuine developmental differences between boys and girls on starting school.

Gender gaps narrow over primary school

By the end of primary school, we find that girls’ and boys’ attainment has largely converged. Girls are less than one month ahead by age 11, based on a measure combining maths and reading.

But as at age 5, key stage 2 gaps are subject-dependent and the official statistics indicate girls outperformed boys in all subjects in 2023 except for maths, where boys performed better. Girls were further ahead in writing, consistent with the patterns observed at age 5.

The gap-narrowing between the ages of 5 and 11 on the headline measure is striking because it goes against what we observe for other gaps that we estimate in our annual report (such as for disadvantage and special educational needs and disabilities) and challenges the notion that gaps inevitably widen as children progress in schooling.

Gaps widen again during secondary school

But having closed during primary school, the gender gap then widens again during secondary school, with girls 4.5 months ahead of boys across GCSE English and maths.

Boys lose ground to girls in maths - where girls fully catch up with boys by age 16 - as well as English, where girls pull even further ahead.

This GCSE gap is nothing new and first emerged in the 1980s around the time that O levels were replaced by GCSEs.

The move towards more continuous assessment seems to have benefited girls - and is possibly reflected in the recent spiking of the GCSE gap (in girls’ favour) in 2020 and 2021, when exams were cancelled and replaced by centre and teacher assessments.

The pandemic affected girls more than boys

Perhaps our most striking gender finding is the marked narrowing of the gender gap since 2019 at both primary and secondary.

The GCSE gap has fallen to its lowest level since 2011. Normally gap-narrowing is good news but digging deeper, what we’re seeing at least partly reflects the falling attainment of girls at ages 11 and 16.

This is consistent with other EPI research, which found that the pandemic has had a bigger effect on girls’ learning than on boys’.

Is this a post-pandemic blip or the start of a more worrisome trend for girls? Time will tell but we cannot be complacent and assume the groups who generally do better will just continue to do better.

We know there have been large post-pandemic increases in poor mental health, particularly among teenage girls, and girls are more likely than boys to have reported challenges when returning to school.

Recent research also finds that socioemotional skills at age 14 seem to be particularly important in predicting GCSE attainment for girls, whereas, for boys, cognitive skills matter more.

We plan to do further research to understand how gender intersects with other characteristics, such as SEND, to drive attainment gaps.

With the new education secretary also the minister for women and equalities, there has never been a better time to develop bold, new and evidence-based ideas on how to close attainment gaps in all their forms - a key measure of success for the newly branded ”department of opportunity”. 

Emily Hunt is EPI’s associate director for social mobility and vulnerable learners

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