Organisational skills also seem to play a big part in the gender differences in academic achievement. Girls work harder, they more often than boys bring the correct equipment to school, meet deadlines for work and probably most importantly in my opinion at least, are more motivated than boys. Increased involvement of coursework in Gcse's, a levels and GNVQ's, has become an advantage to girls, because good organisational skills are required for coursework and so this generally leads to girls achieving more than boys on not only the coursework aspect, but also on the overall grades for subjects.
Another important factor in the higher academic achievement of girls over boys is maturity. By the age of 16 girls are estimated to be up to two years more mature than boys. Girls being the more sensible of the genders in priorities by this age, mean girls understand the importance of exams and career choices, so are more motivated to put in the required effort in order to be successful.
In order to gain a fair understanding of why girls do better academically than boys, you also have to look at the question 'why boys underachieve ', as well as' why do girls do so well?' .
Behaviour has to be considered as a key aspect for this. Evidence shows that staff tend not to be as strict on boys as they are as girls, and are more likely to extend boys work deadlines. Teachers expectations of boys are also often lowered due to more tolerance of disruptive behaviour from boys. Boys disruptive behaviour can also often lead to them being sent out of the room, being sent home, suspensions and exclusions, which only decrease their classroom learning time and more often than not, results in poor grades when it comes to exams. Along with disruptive behaviour, rebellion can play a big part in boys underachievement in exams. Many boys develop an anti-education and learning subculture by conforming to the unwritten laws of peer pressure and 'street cred' of not working.
