• Friday, February 07, 2025
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Boys in S. Africa fallng behind girls in learning, new study finds

Boys in S. Africa fallng behind girls in learning, new study finds

Boys are falling behind girls at every stage of school and are more likely to repeat a grade or drop out, finds new research from the University of Stellenbosch.

While roughly equal numbers of boys and girls enroll for grade 10, by the time they reach grade 12 about 100,000 more girls are enrolled than boys. At the other end of the spectrum, boys who start grade 1 at the minimum possible age of five-and-a-half are much more likely to repeat the year than girls. And in grade 4, girls outperform boys on language tests, the researchers found.

The findings raise questions for policymakers about the best way to help boys catch up, and whether it would be best to devise programmes targeting boys or focus on the weakest schools where the gender gap is most pronounced, said Servaas van der Berg, head of the Research on Socio Economic Policy unit at Stellenbosch University.

The analysis was conducted across six provinces, using data from three government databases: the South African School Administration and Management System, the Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System, and the Data Driven Districts programme. It included data from Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North West.

It found children who start grade 1 at the minimum age of five-and-a-half were much more likely to repeat the year than children who had already turned six and that the effect was more pronounced among boys.

Read also: Here are 5 trends to shape education in 2025

In the Eastern Cape, for example, the repetition rate for boys entering school at a younger age was 31%, compared to 19% for girls. The repetition rates was significantly lower for children who entered grade 1 at six-and-a-half, but the gender gap remained: Eastern Cape boys had a 20% repetition rate, compared to 8% for girls. The same pattern was seen in all the other provinces.

Admission requirements vary between provinces and schools: while SA’s education policy says children may be admitted to grade 1 as young as five and a half (turning six by June), many quintile five schools and wealthier provinces only let children start grade 1 once they are already six, that is, turning seven during that calendar year.

More work is needed to tease out why younger children in grade 1 are more likely to struggle to attain the skills they need to progress to grade 2 but one possibility is that they are not developmentally ready, Van der Berg said.

Resep researcher Bianca Bohme said it was too soon to make firm policy recommendations on how to close the gender gap, which was seen in many other countries.

The researchers scrutinised the performance of children who transitioned from mother tongue education in the foundation phase (grade R to grade 3) to English as the language of instruction in grade 4.

They found children who were proficient in their home language in grade 3 consistently achieved higher English language scores in grade 4. Once again girls outperformed boys, scoring between 3 and 5 percentage points higher on English as first additional language tests.

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