GIRLS
ARE BETTER THAN
BOYS?

Tony Gallagher

University of Ulster

TWO RECENTLY PUBLISHED REPORTS from the Northern Ireland Council for Educational Research contain evidence on the comparative performance of boys and girls in public examinations at 16. They show girls outperforming boys (even after allowance is made for ability level).

This is particularly significant in Northern Ireland because in Northern Ireland there are still Grammar schools. A lot hangs on your passing or failing an exam called the ‘eleven-plus’. If you pass you will be offered a free place in a Grammar school, a school with an ‘academic’ syllabus which will open up chances for entry to University and the professions. If you fail the eleven-plus you will probably go to a school which does not aim to get you to university; the professions will be, virtually, closed to you. Therefore, for the intellectual health of the country, and for equity in selection, the eleven-plus exam has been two verbal-reasoning-type tests, taken in the 1st term of the final year of primary schooling. It is said to test knowledge and educational aptitude. The top 27% of boys and the top 27% of girls qualified for a non-fee paying place in a Grammar school. Was this fair?

Boys and girls were treated as separate (but equal?) populations. This ‘discrimination’ was justified in 1984 by Nicholas Scott, the then Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for Education in Northern Ireland:

The present procedure, which is designed to select those most likely to benefit from academic courses, takes account of the differing intellectual maturity between boys and girls, but not by making adjustments to scores. I am fully persuaded that our procedure is fair to all the children.

In other words, girls were expected to have higher attainment at age 11, but boys were expected to have caught up at some later stage. If this premise was valid, then to treat boys and girls as a single population at 11 would, in fact, discriminate against boys.

The two reports, Pupils in the Border Band and Transfer Pupils at Sixteen both suggested that the premise was not valid. Studying 484 15-year-olds, the Border Band study showed that, girls, on average, achieved the equivalent of nearly one ‘O-level’ exam pass more than the boys. Significantly more of the girls (74.4%) than of the boys (57.5%) achieved four or more ‘O-level’ passes, the minimum level of attainment necessary to retain or obtain a place in the sixth form of a Grammar school.

The Transfer Pupils at Sixteen study used a larger sample of 1500 pupils, randomly drawn from the list of pupils transferring from primary to post-primary schools in 1981. On average and total attainment scores, and the four ‘O-level’ criterion, girls did better at 16 than boys. More importantly, this was true also for girls and boys with the same grades in eleven-plus.

These results should not have come as a complete surprise to the Department of Education in Northern Ireland: their most recent School Leaver Statistics show girls outperforming boys.

The Test Case

Following the publication of Transfer Pupils at Sixteen the Equal Opportunities Commission decided to support a test case alleging that the policy of treating boys and girls as separate populations amounted to sex discrimination. The parents of four girls, who had taken the eleven-plus examination in 1987 and who had been deemed not qualified for a Grammar school place, argued, on the basis of their school work, that their daughters had probably obtained better marks on the tests than boys who had qualified for grammar school places. As background evidence the Equal Opportunities Commission submitted copies of Pupils in the Border Band and Transfer Pupils at Sixteen with the High Court Judge. The Court therefore had two issues to decide on: first, whether or not the policy of separate ranking for boys and girls in the selection procedure was illegal, and second, whether or not the four girls whose parents had brought the case had themselves been discriminated against.

On 1 July 1988 the Judge ruled that the Department of Education’s policy of separate ranking at 11 did amount to sex discrimination and was therefore illegal. On 6 July the Department announced that the policy of separate marking would cease and that the marks for the 1987/8 Transfer age-group would be reviewed such that the entire age-group would be treated as a single population. On the basis of the review an additional 305 girls fell within the top 27 percent of marks and were awarded qualified status. Also, the Department announced that any qualified boys who, in consequence of the review, had been displaced from the top 27 percent would nevertheless retain their grammar places.

The Education and Library Boards are currently trying to place in Grammar Schools those affected girls who wish to avail of this opportunity. Of the four girls involved in the test case, at least three were not among the extra 305 qualifiers. However, these three girls may yet obtain grammar places. After the Department’s initial response to the Court’s ruling, the Equal Opportunities Commission argued that any girl who obtained marks equal to or above that of the lowest qualified boy, should be declared qualified.

As a result of the Court’s July ruling just over 400 boys, who had been in the top 27 percent of boys’ marks, were displaced from the top 27 percent of all pupils’ marks. The Equal Opportunities Commission argued that the Department’s decision to allow these boys to retain their non-feepaying places in Grammar schools amounted to sex discrimination and that any girls with marks equal to or above the lowest qualified boy should be offered a free grammar place. On 20 September the Judge ruled in favour of this argument and a further 555 girls were offered non-feepaying places in grammar schools. It is not known how this affected the girls involved in the test case.

Lessons

The research findings and the outcome of the subsequent court case raise a number of important questions, for educationalists and researchers in particular, and for society more generally.

Firstly, the case raises some questions for educationalists on the efficacy of ability tests. We can think of the two main types of tests that are given to children as (a) curriculum-based tests of achievement which seek to determine the extent to which children have acquired some particular, specific, knowledge, and (b) tests of ability which should reflect more general knowledge and a talent for a certain type of learning. The eleven-plus was designed as an ability test, and used in Northern Ireland to select those pupils who should most benefit from the academic curriculum of a grammar school. Ability tests were preferred over knowledge tests for selection to grammar schools since knowledge-based tests were thought to be too heavily influenced by such factors as home background.

In the court case this background was irrelevant as far as the judge was concerned: he was solely interested in the outcome of the tests vis-a-vis sex discrimination. Furthermore, the Department of Education ignored the rationale of its own tests when it decided to allow the boys who had originally ‘passed’ the eleven-plus, but were then displaced from the top 27%, to retain their grammar places. Furthermore, Wilson (1987) has pointed out that in the 1950s approximately 15% of the transfer age-group were deemed to have qualified on the eleven-plus, but by the 1980s this had risen to almost 30%. It would seem that suitability for a grammar school education is more related to the number of grammar places available than to any abstract criterion of suitability.

The second issue is of particular relevance to researchers, but is important also for those generally interested in the formation of social policy. At the time of the research into the Transfer Procedure, NICER was almost wholly funded by the Department of Education in Northern Ireland. However, NICER was free to publish its research findings. This was important because it allowed a third party, in this case the Equal Opportunities Commission, to draw upon those research findings when launching its legal challenge. In the interests of free and democratic discussion on social policy it is important that research results are openly and widely available.

Thirdly, a number of questions are raised for feminists and those interested in the issue of gender equality. Feminists may say, one hopes with their tongues in cheek, that the NICER research confirms what they already knew, i.e., that girls are intellectually superior to boys. However, Northern Irish society differs little from most other societies in the generally subordinate role allotted to women. Thus, if girls out-perform boys at school at the ages of eleven and sixteen, what happens afterwards to set limits on women’s performance in the labour market? Two possibilities suggest themselves. The first is that in later stages of the educational process women are shunted into curricular ghettoes that limit their options in the labour market; in other words, what people are qualified in over-rides qualifications per se. The second possibility is that discrimination against women in the labour market is even stronger than might previously have been thought. It would seem that any initial self-congratulation on the NICER findings by feminists ought, perhaps, to be replaced by more sober reflection by everyone on the wider implications for women in society.

The fourth and final set of questions raised by the episode concerns the linkage between educational policy and equal opportunity. At the time the eleven-plus was devised, equal opportunity for women or members of ethnic minorities was not given the priority properly afforded from the 1960s onwards. Whilst life chances hang on the outcomes of exams, with national qualifications giving entry to further education, better paid jobs and a better life style, debates about what tests measure are far from academic, and are not the sole perogative of educationalists. At the extremes, poor testing could exclude Einsteins from Mathematics, put Calibans into haute couture. At the very least, poor testing, including that which reflects older stereotyped notions of ability and development, could mean that particular categories of people will have to put up with less than fulfilling lives. If educationalists do not look to their techniques and methods in the light of the wider commitment to equal opportunity, it could happen that, as in Northern Ireland, other people do it for them.

Notes

Dr A.M. Gallagher worked for the Northern Ireland Council for Educational Research between 1985 and 1987 and is currently Research Officer at the Centre for the Study of Conflict, University of Ulster at Coleraine, Northern Ireland.

References

Equal Opportunities Commission of Northern Ireland (1983) Quality in Education: Are you providing it? - a guide to good practice in the provision of equal opportunities in education, Belfast: EOC.

Gallagher, A.M. (1988) Transfer Pupils at Sixteen, Report No. 4 from the NICER Transfer Procedure Project, Belfast: NICER.

Johnston, J. and Rooney, E. (1987) Gender differences in education. In R.D. Osborne, R.J. Cormack and R. Miller (eds.) Education and Policy in Northern Ireland, Belfast: Policy Research Institute.

Scott, N. (1984) Speech by Mr Nicholas Scott MP, Under-Secretary of State responsible for education, at the annual conference of the Ulster Teachers’ Union at Newcastle, County Down (27 April 1984), Belfast: Northern Ireland Information Service.

Sutherland, A.E. and Gallagher, A.M. (1986) Transfer and the Upper Primary School, Report No. 1 from the NICER Transfer Procedure Project, Belfast: NICER.

Sutherland, A.E. and Gallagher, A.M. (1987) Pupils in the Border Band, Report No. 3 from the NICER Transfer Procedure Project, Belfast:

Wilson, J.A. (1987) Selection for Secondary Education. In R.D. Osborne, R.J. Cormack and R. Miller (eds.) Education and Policy in Northern Ireland, Belfast: Policy Research Institute.

Copies of the NICER Transfer Procedure Project reports can be obtained from the NICER Research Unit, Queen’s University, Belfast.