Boys better at maths, girls better at reading

Bay News- October 1 2008

Boys better at mathematics, girls better at reading

The recent publication of the analysis of the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), shows that things have not really changed much over the years, girls are better than boys at reading, but they cannot match up to their male peers in maths.

The analysis carried out by the Ministry of Education demonstrated that girls outperformed boys at reading by 37 points, achieving a mean score of 539 compared to 502. But boys did better at maths, gaining a mean score that was 11 points higher than girls. These patterns were repeated for both maths and reading across the Organization for economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in the tests, which were taken by 15 year olds.

And the difference continues right through adulthood, with women outperforming men on adult literacy tests, but men doing better in numeracy.

In the recent Adult Literacy and Life (ALL) survey, women achieved a higher score in literacy than men, but the mean numeracy score was better for males than females. However, the gap was much narrower amongst adults than teenagers.

When the PISA results were first released, they showed that New Zealand students scored highly overall in mathematics, reading and science, recording the fifth-highest score of participating countries in reading, the seventh-highest in science and 11th highest in mathematics.

Interestingly, the two countries that are investing a huge amount of energy in regular national testing programmes, England and the United States, continue to rank 25 and 36 respectively in the maths tests, and England 19th in the Literacy scores (no score for USA).

The focus in New Zealand education on formative assessment (using a range of types of tests throughout units of work to inform where a student lacks understanding), rather than summative testing (end point tests which show how much a student knows), is showing that the obsession with state run tests at many stages in a child’s education, does not bear fruit. Teachers need to be able to use small, regular and variable assessments to inform them of a student’s learning and their own teaching practice.

While in New Zealand we still have a way to go to bring all of our students to an acceptable level of literacy and numeracy, we are on the right track and doing a lot better than many of the countries we have had long associations with. We must be wary that we never have testing by edict ( a government’s bright idea to lift achievement by setting arbitrary standards), but maintain the focus on formative assessment that continually informs a student’s understanding of literacy and numeracy. We are on the right path, we just need to keep up the momentum and fine-tune the process as we go.