Girls have moved further ahead of boys in their Leaving Certificate performance in several key subjects and are now gaining an even greater percentage of honours in higher-level modern languages than their male counterparts. John Downes reports.
Despite boys managing to narrow the gap slightly in some areas, the difference in Leaving Certificate performance between boys and girls has widened this year in several higher-level subjects. These include French, German, history and accounting.
An analysis of the Leaving Certificate results for this year also reveals that girls continue to outperform boys in almost every major higher-level subject when it comes to obtaining an honour. This includes maths and the sciences, which in the past were seen as male strongholds.
This trend continues at ordinary level, where more males than females once again failed this year. Strikingly, one in every five boys taking last June's ordinary-level biology or accounting exams failed.
At ordinary level, the failure rate for boys was higher than for girls in 15 of the 21 main subjects. For example, 16 per cent of boys opting to study the ordinary-level home economics course failed the exam, compared with 8 per cent of girls.
Girls also got more higher-level A1s in 13 out of 21 main Leaving Certificate subjects, including Irish, English and physics. Equal proportions of both sexes obtained A1s in biology, with more males obtaining A1s in subjects such as maths and applied maths.
Overall, boys obtained more honours than girls in only four out of 21 main Leaving Cert subjects at higher level.
These included applied maths, engineering and construction studies. In engineering, 76 per cent of boys obtained an honour compared to 70 per cent of girls.
Interestingly, while girls continue to do better at higher-level maths, the gap between the sexes has narrowed this year by 2 per cent, with 79 per cent of girls obtaining an honour compared to 77 per cent of boys.
Similarly, boys have managed to narrow the gap somewhat in subjects such as higher-level home economics, physics, Irish and geography. But girls continue to outperform boys in these subjects.
The percentage of girls gaining honours in higher-level religious education - examined for the first time this year - and home economics was also 13 per cent higher than the male figure.