Globally, girls lead boys in academic achievement
In countries around the world, girls are academically outperforming boys. Even when they have the odds stacked against them, the strong, smart and confident girls of the world manage to overcome the political, economic or social inequalities that rack their nations. A new report from Dr. Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Glasgow in Scotland and David C. Geary of the University of Missouri found that in 2009, high school girls performed significantly better on an international standardized test in 52 out of 74 studied countries. SEE ALSO: U.S. students show poor academic standards, according to PISA report Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA is a test that has been distributed around the world since 2000 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Researchers originally believed girls would do worse on the PISA in countries where they were typically treated more unfairly than boys. However, they found the opposite to be true. Researchers found that on the 2009 test, girls performed better than boys in reading, math and science in 70 percent of studied countries. Girls have been consistently outperforming boys for the last decade, regardless of countries treatment of women. “In a lot of these countries women are not allowed to do a lot of things, but what’s interesting is even in these countries girls are doing better in school,” Geary told The Huffington Post. Even strict Muslim countries where there tends to be a “lack of opportunities for girls and women” showed the same results. The top male performers did tend to do better on the math portion of the exam than did the top female test-takers, which is probably why STEM-related jobs continue to be so male-dominated. But at the same time, he said, there has been a lack of focus on the fact that girls seem to be performing better on the whole. “All debate and fretting over STEM stuff, where boys go into STEM fields and do better at math, that is all at the upper end of achievement,” said Geary. “But theres a whole lot of other kids in the world that are never going to go into STEM. When you look at all of those other 95 percent of the worlds kids, we see boys falling behind girls pretty much everywhere.” Geary said he worried about the study’s implications for an increasingly complex labor market. Especially in non-developed countries, he said, there’s going to be “a lot of boys who are going to become young adults with few employable skills. If you have countries with a large percentage of these types of men, crime rates go up.”. While girls are continuing to excel, perhaps it is time more attention must be paid to the boys who are falling behind in school. SEE ALSO: The US education report card looks bleak “The boys’ problems are overlooked,” said Geary. “It’s an important problem and a worldwide problem, and potentially has some serious implications … it just hasnt been addressed and is not even on peoples radar to even figure out why this is the case.”The post Globally, girls lead boys in academic achievement appeared first on Voxxi.
In countries around the world, girls are academically outperforming boys. Even when they have the odds stacked against them, the strong, smart and confident girls of the world manage to overcome the political, economic or social inequalities that rack their nations.
A new report from Dr. Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Glasgow in Scotland and David C. Geary of the University of Missouri found that in 2009, high school girls performed significantly better on an international standardized test in 52 out of 74 studied countries.
SEE ALSO: U.S. students show poor academic standards, according to PISA report
Programme for International Student Assessment or PISA is a test that has been distributed around the world since 2000 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Researchers originally believed girls would do worse on the PISA in countries where they were typically treated more unfairly than boys.
However, they found the opposite to be true.
Researchers found that on the 2009 test, girls performed better than boys in reading, math and science in 70 percent of studied countries. Girls have been consistently outperforming boys for the last decade, regardless of countries treatment of women.
“In a lot of these countries women are not allowed to do a lot of things, but what’s interesting is even in these countries girls are doing better in school,” Geary told The Huffington Post. Even strict Muslim countries where there tends to be a “lack of opportunities for girls and women” showed the same results.
The top male performers did tend to do better on the math portion of the exam than did the top female test-takers, which is probably why STEM-related jobs continue to be so male-dominated. But at the same time, he said, there has been a lack of focus on the fact that girls seem to be performing better on the whole.
“All debate and fretting over STEM stuff, where boys go into STEM fields and do better at math, that is all at the upper end of achievement,” said Geary. “But theres a whole lot of other kids in the world that are never going to go into STEM. When you look at all of those other 95 percent of the worlds kids, we see boys falling behind girls pretty much everywhere.”
Geary said he worried about the study’s implications for an increasingly complex labor market. Especially in non-developed countries, he said, there’s going to be “a lot of boys who are going to become young adults with few employable skills. If you have countries with a large percentage of these types of men, crime rates go up.”.
While girls are continuing to excel, perhaps it is time more attention must be paid to the boys who are falling behind in school.
SEE ALSO: The US education report card looks bleak
“The boys’ problems are overlooked,” said Geary. “It’s an important problem and a worldwide problem, and potentially has some serious implications … it just hasnt been addressed and is not even on peoples radar to even figure out why this is the case.”
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The post Globally, girls lead boys in academic achievement appeared first on Voxxi.
