The gender gap in attainment at GCSE and A level has been well documented - girls have been consistently outperforming boys across education phases.

However, the Education Policy Institute think tank has flagged up that recently this gap has been narrowing, particularly since the pandemic.

Girls were more than six months ahead of boys across English and maths at the end of key stage 4 before the pandemic in 2019. But after exams returned post-Covid, this gap narrowed to five months in 2022 and to 4.5 months last year.

The gender attainment gap has also seen a slight narrowing in the 16-19 age group.

This trend seems positive given widespread concern about the lower attainment of boys, but EPI researcher Emily Hunt points out that this change has also been driven by the falling attainment of girls.

In its annual report, EPI says new research must be undertaken to explore this narrowing gap - particularly to discover whether it is linked to worsening mental health among girls since the pandemic.

But it’s not a simple picture: school leaders and academics say a range of factors are likely impacting on both girls’ mental health and their attainment at school, and that many of these factors are interlinked.

Why is the GCSE gender gap narrowing?

Ms Hunt tells Tes: “It’s not just about boys catching up, which they are, but we’re actually seeing declines in girls’ attainment at primary in maths and at GCSE in English.”

Historically, girls have been particularly far ahead of boys at GCSE in their attainment in English. They have also generally been slightly more likely to achieve top grades in English literature A level since 2019.

From 2019 to 2023, boys saw their maths and English attainment increase slightly at KS4.

• Emily Hunt: How the attainment gaps between girls and boys change
• Behaviour: Why girls’ exclusion rates are rising and how to fix it 
• Wellbeing: The crisis in girls’ mental health - and how schools can help

In English language GCSE, the proportion of boys achieving a grade 4 increased from 54 per cent in 2019 to 57.8 per cent in 2023.

In English literature, 68.1 per cent got a grade 4 last year, up from 66.1 per cent in 2019.

In general, GCSE grades in 2023 remained above 2019 levels as Ofqual returned to pre-pandemic grading levels last year but with some mitigations still built in.

However, for girls, a smaller proportion achieved a grade 4 in English literature in 2023 (79.9 per cent) than in 2019 (80.8 per cent).

And the percentage of girls achieving a grade 4 in English language only increased slightly, from 70.3 per cent in 2019 to 71.1 per cent in 2023.

In GCSE maths, boys’ grade 4 attainment increased from 70.7 per cent in 2019 to 72.2 per cent in 2023, whereas girls’ attainment fell slightly, from 71.9 per cent to 71.7 per cent.

There is a general pattern of falling attainment for girls across most GCSE subjects, Ms Hunt says.

The gender gap has also narrowed at key stage 5, with girls achieving around a grade and a half better across their best three A level subjects than boys in 2023 - falling from a gap of 1.8 grades in 2022.

The current gender gap at A level is similar to before the pandemic, when girls were around 1.6 grades ahead of boys on average.

However, it has been reported that boys could close the gap for top grades even further in this year’s A-level results.

Girls’ mental health

Several studies have found that girls’ mental wellbeing has been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic compared with boys’.

School leaders tell Tes that increasing mental health struggles are driving several other crises that could be impacting girls’ attainment.

Absence is one such crisis. Researchers have already warned the Department for Education that poor pupil mental health is “fuelling” a rise in school absence.

The absence rate for secondary girls increased by more than for boys at every transition point between autumn 2022 and 2023, recent FFT Education Datalab analysis shows.

The absence crisis

Responding to the narrowing of the gender attainment gap, Keziah Featherstone, executive head at The Mercian Trust, which has nine academies in the West Midlands, tells Tes: “Without a shadow of a doubt, a lot of it will come down to attendance.

”Certainly in some schools we’ve seen the decline in girls’ attendance. And obviously, if they’re not in the classroom, they can’t be learning.”

Antonia Spinks, CEO of Pioneer Educational Trust, which has four academies in Berkshire, says the trust has seen an increase in the number of students affected by emotionally related school avoidance (ERSA) since the pandemic.

“On the whole, this appears to be affecting girls more than boys for our schools,” she says, adding that it is also more of a problem among more middle-class families.

“In some schools we’ve seen the decline in girls’ attendance”

Ms Spinks says the trust has seen this impacting attainment “to a certain extent”.

“We don’t always know necessarily how it translates if they don’t come in for testing. It’s very complex,” she adds.

Rising misogyny in schools

One of the main difficulties that could be affecting girls’ mental health is the rise in misogyny in schools, says Ms Featherstone.

The NEU teaching union has been warning about levels of sexism in schools, and the Unison union, which represents support staff, has said this also affects its members.

Vivienne Porritt, co-founder of WomenEd, says: “I hear a lot from women leaders about how bothered they are about the girls in the school.

“Misogyny and sexism in schools attacks the self-worth of girls, and if the culture around them is indicating they’re not worthy or that they can’t play the same role in life as boys, that really affects their mental health very significantly and makes them wonder what the point of working really hard is.”

There have been increasing concerns about boys watching online influencers espousing misogynistic views. Some estimates have suggested that most boys aged 16 to 17 have consumed content from influencer Andrew Tate that preaches misogynistic world views.

Ms Featherstone says: “It was there before Covid, but it [increased a lot] over Covid when everybody was trapped in their homes and were on devices, and it just hasn’t gone back to a safe level.

“I think that affects a lot of children’s mental health, and girls are particularly vulnerable - and can be left feeling particularly vulnerable at school.”

It is hard to tell whether girls in single-sex schools are more protected from misogynistic influences. Both girls and boys tend to get better grades in single-sex schools, although much of this effect is explained by factors such as they are more likely to be based in London - which has higher attainment in general - and more of these schools are selective and have pupils with higher prior attainment.

However, even controlling for these differences, students at single-sex schools slightly outperform those at mixed schools, and the effect is greater for girls, FFT Education Datalab finds.

A higher exclusion rate for girls

There may also be other factors at play. Pupils who receive a permanent exclusion - particularly during secondary school - attain less well at KS4, and this is becoming more of a risk for girls.

Boys have been consistently more likely to be excluded, and the rate of permanent exclusion for boys was double that of girls in 2022-23.

However, this is a change from pre-pandemic rates, when boys had more than three times the number of permanent exclusions, explains Alice Tawell, a University of Oxford researcher and expert in school exclusion policy.

The rate of permanent exclusion for girls in 2022-23 was the highest since records began in 2006-07.

Many see this as being closely linked to the increase in girls’ mental health problems, coupled with long waiting lists for treatment.

Dr Tawell says she is aware of one alternative-provision (AP) setting taking in more girls than previously because of a lack of special schools for social and emotional mental health difficulties.

“So there’s something interesting there about what provision is available for girls,” she adds.

Possibly also linked, there has been a 16 per cent rise in the number of girls in AP since before the pandemic, compared with an 8 per cent fall in the number of boys in AP over the same time period.

Students who finish KS4 in AP are far less likely to achieve grade 4 in GCSE English and maths than their mainstream peers.

What needs to be done

It is clear that there is no one standout factor driving the drop in girls’ attainment - and therefore there is no one solution to fix it.

While we’ve focused here on why girls’ attainment is falling in many areas, boys are still underperforming compared with girls, and interventions are needed to address this, too.

There are some areas that many agree require urgent attention. Schools have consistently called for more funding to provide specialist mental health support, along with waiting time targets to ensure that young people can access the support they need.

Making girls feel safer at school is also a big task. Ms Featherstone says a lot of schools “think they can manage through their existing behaviour policies and existing anti-bullying policies” but it is time for a more comprehensive sexual harassment policy.

Guidance for schools on where they can access help from organisations to work with pupils on misogyny would also be beneficial, Ms Porritt says.

“If girls aren’t in the classroom, or are in the classroom but aren’t in the right state of mind, that’s not helping,” adds Ms Featherstone.

A Department for Education spokesperson says it is reviewing the relationships, sex and health education guidance, “which includes strengthening content on misogyny, sexual harassment and sexual violence, while also committing to provide access to specialist mental health professionals in schools, ensuring that every young person receives the support they need”.

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