This article examines how pupils’ gender influences teachers’ assessments and the effects of these on performance and enrolment. By analysing written comments made by maths teachers to more than 600,000 French secondary school pupils over a five-year period, the authors find that teachers praise girls for their effort and positive behaviour, whilst boys with similar performance levels are more often criticised for their behaviour and praised for their intellectual abilities. By utilising a quasi-random allocation of teachers, the authors estimate that gender-differentiated feedback slightly improves performance in mathematics, particularly among girls, especially when the emphasis is on effort. However, this feedback has no measurable effect on pupils’ enrolment in higher education the following year
HAL: halshs-03733956
