Analysis by gender

• Girls progress more than boys on average in English throughout school and across the key stages.

• At Key Stage 1, the difference between boys and girls attainment (of the expected level) in English is 8 percentage point. This gap increases over the key stages to 11 percentage points at Key Stage 2, and 13 percentage points at Key Stage 3.

• Girls also progress more than boys in mathematics and science, although the differences are much smaller than those in English.

• At GCSE, girls continue to progress more than boys. The difference between boys and girls attainment (5+ A*-C) in GCSE English is as much as 14 percentage points.

• Girls outperform boys in English, maths and science at L2 (the expected level) by an average of 5 per cent, although the difference in maths and science is less.
  
  
• Boys outperform girls at the higher L3 maths and science by as much as 5 percentage points in maths and just 2 percentage points in science. This continues the trend from 2001.
  
  
• There are some signs that the gender gap is narrowing among younger pupils. The gap between boys’ and girls’ performance in Key Stage 1 reading and writing and in Key Stage 2 writing has narrowed slightly in recent years.
  
  

• Girls continue to outperform boys in English, with the gap rising to 11 percentage point from Key Stage 1.
  
  
• Girls are starting to close the gap on boys at L5+: 4 percentage point gap from boys in L5+ maths; and 1 percentage point gap in science.
  
  
• The gender gap has reduced by 2 percentage points in English KS2 writing test from last
  
  
• The only target area where boys achieved higher in 2004 was at KS2 Maths L5+ by 4 per cent (33 per cent boys, 29 per cent girls) and by 1 per cent in Science L5+ (43 per cent boys, 42 per cent girls). L4 KS2 Maths and Science are the same year.

• Gender gap in English rises to 13 percentage points at Key Stage 3. However, the gap has closed by 5 percentage points since 2001 (18 percentage point gap between girls and boys KS3 English attainment).
  
  
• Girls now outperform boys in L5+ maths and science and showing signs of overtaking in L6+ maths and science

•  Girls continue to outperform boys, particularly at the higher grades (A*-C); in 2004 58.5 per cent of girls achieved 5 or more grades A*-C compared to 48.4 per cent of boys.
  
  
• The gender gap has reduced slightly by 0.5% since 2001 for those pupils achieving 5 or more GSCE/GNVQ passes at A*-C.

• While females do better on this measure, the gender gap has narrowed according to provisional statistics for this year.  Males have improved slightly more (7.9 average points score) than females (5.7 average points score) between 2003 and 2004.  
  
  
• For individual GCE A Level performance females outperform males (in A-E pass rate) in every subject except Accounting for which the gap is only 0.1 percentage points. 
  
  
• The overall female pass rate has been higher than the male pass rate since 1992.

• The percentage of HE students who are women has been increasing steadily over recent decades and they now outnumber men: 56 per cent of HE students in 2002 were women, compared to 38 per cent in 1982.
  

• In terms of participation rates (the numbers entering HE as a percentage of the population) females have higher rates than men: 37 per cent for women, 30 per cent for men.
  

• The latest data on graduates shows 56 per cent are women, and that they get better degrees than men – 58 per cent of female graduates get first/upper seconds, compared to 51per cent of men.
  

• Women outnumbered men in H.E. for the first time in 1995, and the proportion has been increasing steadily since then.
  

• In terms of HE achievement, the gender gap hasn't changed much: in 1995 the proportion of students who got first/upper second class degrees was 51% for women and 44% for men, compared to 58% and 51% respectively in 2003.