Back in 2022, I wrote a piece looking at prior attainment in English and maths GCSE by Key Stage 5 subject choice. And some readers asked whether this varies by gender.
This seemed like a very good question, and I’m going to try and answer it here. I’ll be using data from the KS4 and KS5 pupil and exam tables from the National Pupil Database, focusing on pupils who completed KS4 in a state-funded school in England in 2019.
Some background
First, a note on how I’m defining ‘gender’. I’ll be referring to gender (as opposed to sex) throughout this post and will be using two categories: male and female. This is based on what the DfE records as part of the termly school census. Whether this is a good way of defining gender is open to question. But it’s what’s available to us in the data.
Now let’s look at how KS4 attainment breaks down by gender.
