Part 2 — PERFORMANCE OF SUBGROUPS - Gender Differences
Gender Differences

Results achieved by male and female students were compared. Year 4 samples across the first four years averaged 50 percent boys and 50 percent girls. Year 8 samples averaged 52 percent boys and 48 percent girls.
Results of the statistical significance tests for the total sample of year 4 and year 8 students are shown in adjoining tables. The first column in each table shows learning areas in order from those on which girls did best to those on which they did worst relative to boys. The second shows the percentage of tasks on which girls performed statistically significantly higher than boys, the third column shows the percentage of tasks on which boys and girls were not statistically significantly different, and the final column shows the percentage of tasks on which boys performed statistically significantly higher than girls.
Gender Differences: Year 4 Students
Subject
G>
=
B>
Writing
79
21
0
Reading
50
50
0
Speaking
36
64
0
Info. Skills
30
70
0
Physical Ed.
23
29
48
Viewing
22
78
0
Art
18
73
9
Music
15
85
0
Listening
13
87
0
Graphs/Tables
11
89
0
Technology
8
75
17
Health
4
96
0
Mathematics
4
94
2
Science
0
90
10
Social Studies
0
86
14
Gender Differences: Year 8 Students
Subject
G>
=
B>
Writing
86
14
0
Reading
64
36
0
Physical Ed.
33
19
48
Viewing
29
71
0
Info. Skills
27
73
0
Health
23
77
0
Listening
22
78
0
Music
20
80
0
Technology
17
75
8
Social Studies
16
53
31
Mathematics
13
85
2
Speaking
9
91
0
Art
9
91
0
Graphs/Tables
3
97
0
Science
0
70
30
   
Comment With the exception of the performance of boys in physical education (years 4 and 8), science and social studies (year 8), girls outperformed boys on a substantial percentage of tasks. The most striking gender differences occur in the area of literacy generally, and most particularly in reading and writing where the gap is unacceptably high. Furthermore, the gap worsens from year 4 to year 8 in reading and writing, although considerable recovery is shown in speaking. Both year 4 and year 8 boys performed better on ten of twenty-one physical education tasks, most of which involved ball handling skills. Year 8 boys performed better than girls on ten of the 33 science tasks which dealt with all strands of the science curriculum.