Young girls are outperforming boys at schools, says study

There are a lot of reasons behind women not being able to advance in leadership roles at work, but good education, isn't one of them. According to a recent report published on March 5th by the OECD, a Paris-based rich-country think-tank, girls are succeeding much more than the boys in most academic institutions.

According to the report by The Economist, a school that charges £25,000 a year and another school that serves subsidised lunches and has students with special needs; both face a similar problem: teenage boys are being left behind by girls academically. This was also consistent in all 64 countries and economies in the study.

The study further reveals the speculated reasons behind this worldwide phenomenon:

• On an average, a 15-year-old girl devotes five-and-a-half hours a week to her homework, the average boy spends an hour less than this.

• Three-quarters of girls read for pleasure, while for boys, the number is just a little more than half.

• More boys than girls find that performing well in academics isn’t “cool.”

• The study all so points out that in some countries, students who perform well academically, often aren't rewarded if their behavior is not found to be  ideal. Most of time, some teachers mark up students “who are polite, eager and stay out of fights, all attributes that are more common among girls,” says the report.

According to The Economist, women who go to university are more likely than their male peers to graduate, and typically get better grades. Still, when it come to working, women are heavily penalized for motherhood and suffer badly at workplace in trying to manage both work and the household.

ORIGINAL SOURCE: The Economist

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