Girls fare better in primary school - study

Girls in primary school fare significantly better than boys in reading, spelling, verbal comprehension and in learning a foreign language, a study has found.

The findings were published last month in the Journal of Maltese Education Research in a paper entitled Sex Differences On Verbal And Non-Verbal Abilities Among Primary Schoolchildren In Malta, written by Victor Martinelli, lecturer in educational psychology at the Faculty of Education, and Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus at the University of Ulster.

Dr Martinelli and Professor Lynn state that it has been reaffirmed over the past century that there is no substantial difference in intelligence between males and females, girls or boys, with the reported differences being described as "small and virtually non-existent". Nonetheless, these differences are at the basis of the difference in the results obtained by boys and girls in their SEC examinations. In fact, girls obtained higher scores in their language examinations than their male counterparts in 2004.

These differences are also evident in primary schoolchildren: "The present study focuses on the first four years of primary school, providing evidence that the differences described by the above are also evident in the early years of education and extend all the way to secondary schooling."

Such a study widens the resources of research conducted locally, but also serves as a database of standardised measures, given that "no major ability measure used internationally has ever been standardised on a representative Maltese population."

"Although one may consider these aims as having largely research goals, in reality they serve primarily to develop a database of locally standardised measures of achievement and ability that would benefit the local community of education psychologists and other related communities in using valid measures in their work with children generally," the authors state.

The study was conducted on 136 primary schoolchildren attending kindergarten classes of seven state primary schools and looks at their abilities from the age of five till nine.

With regard to the non-verbal abilities - reasoning, reading, verbal comprehension, spelling and foreign language ability - the study revealed that girls obtained significantly higher means than boys. On the other hand, non-verbal tests carried out according to the Coloured Progressive Matrices - tests which provide a comprehensive measure of ability to help evaluate pupils' potential, identify those who are underachieving and those who need further challenges - showed that there is no significant difference between girls and boys.

The findings also confirmed that these gender differences are typically found in other countries such as Britain and the US. Even where no significant difference emerged in non-verbal abilities, these findings also coincided with results of studies carried out in Germany, Australia and the US. However, the advantages of girls are higher than those achieved by their female counterparts in other countries.