IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/scotjp/v51y2004i2p209-229.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Girls Rock, Boys Roll: An Analysis of the Age 14–16 Gender Gap in English Schools

Author

Listed:
  • Simon Burgess
  • Brendon McConnell
  • Carol Propper
  • Deborah Wilson

Abstract

We investigate possible explanations for the educational gender gap at age 16. We employ a national dataset of matched exam results of the cohort of pupils who took Key Stage 3 tests in 1999 and GCSEs in 2001. Our key result is the sheer consistency of the gender gap, across both the attainment and the ability distribution, with regard to both raw outcomes and value added. It is primarily driven by performance differentials in English. The generality of the gender gap suggests its source is not within‐school practice, which means that policy directed at improving such practice may be misplaced.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Burgess & Brendon McConnell & Carol Propper & Deborah Wilson, 2004. "Girls Rock, Boys Roll: An Analysis of the Age 14–16 Gender Gap in English Schools," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 51(2), pages 209-229, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:51:y:2004:i:2:p:209-229
    DOI: 10.1111/j.0036-9292.2004.00303.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0036-9292.2004.00303.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.0036-9292.2004.00303.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jo Sparkes, 1999. "Schools, Education and Social Exclusion," CASE Papers 029, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    2. Adele Atkinson & Deborah Wilson, 2003. "Measuring Pupil Attainment in English Secondary Schools: A Preliminary Analysis," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 03/063, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    3. Deborah Wilson, 2004. "Which Ranking? The Impact of a 'Value-Added' Measure of Secondary School Performance," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(1), pages 37-45.
    4. Caroline Hoxby, 2000. "Peer Effects in the Classroom: Learning from Gender and Race Variation," NBER Working Papers 7867, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pekkarinen, Tuomas, 2005. "Gender Differences in Educational Attainment: Evidence on the Role of the Tracking Age from a Finnish Quasi-Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 1897, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Hans Bonesrønning, 2008. "The Effect Of Grading Practices On Gender Differences In Academic Performance," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(3), pages 245-264, July.
    3. Richard Murphy & Felix Weinhardt, 2020. "Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 87(6), pages 2777-2826.
    4. Tuomas Pekkarinen, 2008. "Gender Differences in Educational Attainment: Evidence on the Role of Tracking from a Finnish Quasi‐experiment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 110(4), pages 807-825, December.
    5. Ammermüller, Andreas & Dolton, Peter J., 2006. "Pupil-teacher gender interaction effects on scholastic outcomes in England and the USA," ZEW Discussion Papers 06-060, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    6. Simon Burgess & Brendon McConnell & Carol Propper & Deborah Wilson, 2004. "Sorting and Choice in English Secondary Schools," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 04/111, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    7. Juan Sebastian Munoz, 2014. "Re-estimating the Gender Gap in Colombian Academic Performance," Research Department Publications IDB-WP-469, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    8. Proud, S., 2014. "Girl Power? An Analysis Of Peer Effects Using Exogenous Changes In The Gender Make-Up Of The Peer Group," Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 14(3), pages 5-18.
    9. Cheti Nicoletti & Birgitta Rabe, 2013. "Inequality in Pupils' Test Scores: How Much do Family, Sibling Type and Neighbourhood Matter?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 80(318), pages 197-218, April.
    10. Richard Murphy & Felix Weinhardt, 2013. "The Importance of Rank Position," CEP Discussion Papers dp1241, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Proud, S., 2014. "Girl Power? An Analysis Of Peer Effects Using Exogenous Changes In The Gender Make-Up Of The Peer Group," Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 14(3), pages 5-18.
    2. Lundborg, Petter, 2006. "Having the wrong friends? Peer effects in adolescent substance use," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 214-233, March.
    3. Maria De Paola & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2010. "Peer group effects on the academic performance of Italian students," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(17), pages 2203-2215.
    4. Adriaan R. Soetevent, 2006. "Empirics of the Identification of Social Interactions; An Evaluation of the Approaches and Their Results," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(2), pages 193-228, April.
    5. Daniele Checchi & Giuseppe Bertola, 2001. "Sorting and private education in Italy," Departmental Working Papers 2001-21, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    6. Lang, Kevin & Siniver, Erez, 2011. "Why is an elite undergraduate education valuable? Evidence from Israel," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(6), pages 767-777.
    7. Zhang, Hongliang, 2016. "The role of testing noise in the estimation of achievement-based peer effects," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 113-123.
    8. Anne Ardila Brenøe & Ulf Zölitz, 2020. "Exposure to More Female Peers Widens the Gender Gap in STEM Participation," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 38(4), pages 1009-1054.
    9. Chareyron, Sylvain & Chung, Amélie & Domingues, Patrick, 2021. "Ethnic diversity and educational success: Evidence from France," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 133-143.
    10. Adam S. Booij & Edwin Leuven & Hessel Oosterbeek, 2017. "Ability Peer Effects in University: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 547-578.
    11. Humlum, Maria Knoth & Thorsager, Mette, 2021. "The Importance of Peer Quality for Completion of Higher Education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    12. Brock, William A. & Durlauf, Steven N., 2007. "Identification of binary choice models with social interactions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 52-75, September.
    13. Stephen L. Ross, 2009. "Social Interactions within Cities: Neighborhood Environments and Peer Relationships," Working papers 2009-31, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    14. Lisa Grazzini, 2016. "The Importance of the Quality of Education: Some Determinants and its Effects on Earning Returns and Economic Growth," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(2), pages 43-82.
    15. Ana Balsa & Néstor Gandelman & Flavia Roldán, 2017. "Peer and parental influence in the development of cognitive skills and predispostion to risky behaviour," Documentos de Trabajo/Working Papers 1701, Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales y Economia. Universidad de Montevideo..
    16. repec:cep:stitep:/2013/564 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Steven N. Durlauf & Yannis M. Ioannides, 2010. "Social Interactions," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 451-478, September.
    18. Claudia Olivetti & Eleonora Patacchini & Yves Zenou, 2020. "Mothers, Peers, and Gender-Role Identity," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(1), pages 266-301.
    19. Xu, Dafeng, 2017. "Acculturational homophily," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 29-42.
    20. Marchionni, Mariana & Vazquez, Emmanuel & Pinto, Florencia, 2012. "Desigualdad educativa en la Argentina. Análisis en base a los datos PISA 2009 [Education Inequality in Argentina. An analysis based on PISA 2009 data]," MPRA Paper 56420, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. George M. Holmes, "undated". "Does school choice increase school quality?," Working Papers 0106, East Carolina University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • L3 - Industrial Organization - - Nonprofit Organizations and Public Enterprise

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:51:y:2004:i:2:p:209-229. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sesssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.