Girls’ achievement in mathematics
Research into the reasons for differences in attainment between girls and boys in
mathematics suggests a number of hypotheses, linked to learning styles and ways of
working, as well as teachers’ attitudes and perceptions, and the ways girls perceive
themselves as learners.
Hypotheses for girl’s attainment in maths
For hundreds of years there has been a belief that girls and women do not do
mathematics because they cannot and this view remains strong in the perception of the
public. This view may be perpetuated by parents and used as a form of acceptance as
to why girls struggle with maths.
Girls enjoy the routine practicing of skills and techniques more than boys. However they
often get too little opportunity to consolidate what they know when lessons are
dominated by the response of attention seeking boys. The quiet hardworking girl is often
hidden by her own silence and desire to please.
In KS1, girls may be just getting by at seven using weak, inefficient and laborious
strategies. They get the right answers but are not picked out as struggling. When
numbers get bigger these methods are error prone, time-consuming and inefficient. This
is a time when girls fall behind as they are not picking up on more efficient mental
strategies and also experience a lowering of confidence. Boys are less likely to keep
trying to use time-consuming strategies for calculations with bigger numbers. They will
use a new strategy or just get it wrong so the teacher will see more easily that they do
not understand.
Girls like to have methods clearly defined and explained and to be shown how to use
them. Girls’ success can be attributed to their ability to follow rules rather than ‘real
understanding.’
Boys are more likely to have a go without worrying about presentation, consequences
and results. Girls give more attention to detail and are more unsettled by the
unexpected.
Boys flit, move on to the next task and aim to reach the end as quickly as possible even
if they have not answered everything on the way. Girls aim to complete what they are
being given to do and will spend time thinking about how they can respond.
Girls are likely to attribute mathematical success to effort, and failure to lack of ability,
whereas boys are more likely to attribute success to ability and failure as lack of effort.
Failure linked in the child’s mind to lack of ability has a greater negative effect than
anything else on further performance. Therefore failure in mathematics is more likely to
impact on a girl’s future achievement than on a boy’s. Confidence is a critical variable
linked to mathematics achievement levels.
Strategies to raise the achievement of girls
Talking about maths and using group work and collaborative/co-operative learning
 Use teaching through dialogue to share and build on ideas
 Promote confidence through talk partners and paired work.
 Give girls opportunities to define and explain methods and rules so they can apply
them later.
 Nominate children to answer rather than hands up
 Mistakes should be treated as new discoveries and the culture of the learning
environment should emphasize that they can be made with neither fear of reprimand
nor of ridicule. Children need to know that they can test ideas in a non-threatening
way.
Positive feedback
 Praise ability not just effort
 Seek opportunities to elicit ideas, knowledge and reasoning from girls to highlight
their ability
 Create a climate in which you talk about learning not just success
Clarity in learning intentions with clear success criteria
 Use plenaries to focus on what was difficult, what helped, what could be done
differently
 Scaffold learning by alternating practice with rolling plenaries.
 Ensure quality working time for girls to consolidate skills and techniques
Effective marking
Marking by grade or score can have a dramatic effect on pupils’ perception of their ability
and can lower self-esteem and motivation while marking linked to the quantity of work or
presentation can mask a lack of understanding of key concepts. Shirley Clark
recognises four types of marking:
 Acknowledgement marking
 Marking exercises which are correct or not
 Quality marking with ‘closing the gap’ prompts to move learning forwards
 Quality marking by the child/children together.
Pupils need to be clear that marking will focus on the purpose of the task, how far they
got in achieving it and what they need to do to move on in their learning. Marking that is
clear, well directed and explicit is likely to meet the learning styles of girls. Comments
linked to the learning intention may be:
 A reminder (‘Remember what happens to the digits when you divide by 10’)
 A question (‘Which of these two answers for question 12 is correct?’)
 A directive (‘Come and explain how you answered number 12’)
 An unfinished sentence (‘ When we divide by 10, all the digits move …’)
 If all questions are correctly answered (‘These are all correct. Can you tell me the
rule?’)
Compiled by Leicestershire Primary Team, based on a range of sources (2005), reviewed 2006