A helping hand for girls? Gender bias in marks and its impact on progress

Terrier, Camille

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A helping hand for girls? Gender bias in marks and its impact on progress

Camille Terrier

December 2014

This paper examines gender bias in marks awarded by teachers, and looks at the effect of this bias on girls’ progress compared with that of boys. This study aims to explain the achievement gap between boys and girls on entry to middle school / lower secondary school, and the narrowing of this gap during middle school / lower secondary school in mathematics, whilst it remains constant in French.

Reference IPP Policy Brief No. 14

Quote this publication

Terrier, Camille (December 2014). ‘A helping hand for girls? Gender bias in marks’, IPP Policy Brief, no. 14. Institut des politiques publiques (IPP).

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Presentation

On starting middle school / lower secondary school, girls’ results are better than boys’ in French, but worse in mathematics. These differences in achievement narrow over time in mathematics, so that by the end of Year 9, girls perform just as well as boys. This IPP Policy Brief helps to explain these differences in achievement and how they evolve over time by addressing two key questions: are there biases in the marks awarded by teachers based on pupils’ gender? Do these biases influence girls’ progress compared with that of boys?

Using marks awarded both anonymously and non-anonymously to Year 7 pupils in the Créteil school district, the analysis reveals positive discrimination in favour of girls in mathematics and an absence of bias in French: at the same level (measured anonymously), a girl receives better marks from her maths teacher than a boy. The fact that girls are less disruptive in class does not seem to explain this ‘boost’. Secondly, we show that in mathematics, the classes in which teachers exhibit the highest bias in favour of girls are also the classes in which girls make the most progress relative to boys. This new finding is consistent with research showing that marking practices influence pupils’ motivation and progress, and it provides an explanation for the narrowing of the achievement gap observed between girls and boys in mathematics during middle school / lower secondary school.

Key Results

In our sample, maths teachers’ marks reveal a bias in favour of girls, who, on average, receive marks 6 per cent higher than those of boys with similar characteristics in Year 6. No such bias is observed in French.
The fact that girls are less disruptive in class is not the reason for this ‘boost’.
In maths, the classes in which teachers display the highest levels of positive discrimination in favour of girls are also the classes in which girls make the most progress relative to boys. In the absence of positive discrimination in marking, girls would not have progressed any more than boys, and the catch-up achieved by girls would not have taken place.