Girls are not more gifted than boys when it comes to schoolwork, but they may get better grades because their teachers are biased towards them, a new study suggests.
Data from Italian researchers found that when exams are marked independently and anonymously boys do better in maths than girls.
However, when teachers are marking their own class, this switches, with girls coming out on top. In tests graded from one to 10, the average grade for GCSE-aged girls was 6.3, while the boys averaged 5.9, which is below the pass mark of six in Italy.
Scores of almost 40,000 student test results revealed there to be a systemic trend of giving girls higher scores, researchers from the University of Trento said.
