Girls are less likely than boys to plan to apply to an elite
university despite having the same academic ability, a new study
by the UCL Institute of Education finds.
Researchers at the UCL Centre for Education Policy
& Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO) found Year 11 boys held
more ambitious educational plans than girls, even when they
attended the same school, came from similar family backgrounds
and had the same prior educational achievements.
The team used data on 5,000 15- and 16-year-old
pupils from England, gathered in the run-up to their GCSEs in
2016, to measure how their levels of drive and ambition impacted
on their future education.
The research, published as part of a CEPEO working
paper series, also reveals young people from wealthier
backgrounds exhibit higher levels of drive than their
disadvantaged peers, despite both groups being equally
ambitious.
The academics explored the impact of socioemotional
skills including ambition (the extent to which pupils’ goals are
ambitious) and drive (how much pupils push themselves to the
maximum of their abilities in order to reach these ambitious
goals) on “high-stakes” exam outcomes.
The team found that pupils who are both driven and
ambitious achieve results around half a grade higher in each GCSE
exam than their peers who are not.
They say this highlights the importance of young
people remaining motivated and focused in the build-up to
high-stakes exams such as GCSEs or A-levels, which have
consequences if they pass or fail.
Due to the coronavirus outbreak GCSEs have been
cancelled this year, with a new system in place to award grades
and the optional chance for pupils to sit exams in the
autumn.
Previous UCL Institute of Education research found
children locked down at home in the UK are spending an average of
2.5 hours a day doing schoolwork, sparking concerns over the
potential threat to their educational development*.
Professor John Jerrim (UCL Institute of Education),
co-author of today’s study, said: “Our results illustrate how
young people’s academic drive and ambition during those crunch
months in Year 11 have a large impact upon how they perform in
their GCSEs.
“They show that having concrete plans may matter,
especially in challenging times such as now.
“We thought there would be a really big
socio-economic difference in who wants to go to an elite
university, but were surprised at how persistent the gender
difference is.”
They found that teenagers who are academically driven
(top quartile of the academic drive scale) and ambitious (plan to
apply to Oxford or Cambridge University) achieve a total GCSE
points score around half a grade per subject higher than their
peers who are unmotivated (bottom quartile of the scale) and
academically unambitious (do not plan to go to
university).
While the academics found no difference between the
drive of high-attaining boys and girls, they said educators need
to be aware of the gender gap in ambition and monitor how this
plays out in the school-to-work transition.
Co-author Dr Nikki Shure (UCL Institute of Education)
said: “Previous studies show that women are less
likely to compete, even when they might perform better than men.
This research raises questions about why high attaining girls are
uncomfortable making or expressing ambitious university plans.
There is more work to be done than just encouraging them to be
more ambitious.”
Dr Gill Wyness (UCL Institute of Education/CEPEO)
added: “Even though young people from disadvantaged backgrounds
do not make less ambitious plans, we find they exhibit lower
levels of drive using a motivation scale available in the data.
This could indicate that lower levels of drive make it difficult
to realise their ambitious goals.
“One possible way of motivating young people to
realise their ambitions is to encourage them to make a concrete
academic plan for the future.”
The research was based on data collected as part of
the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which
was sponsored by the Department for Education.
It was funded by the Centre for Global Higher
Education and the British Academy.
Notes to Editors
* https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/jun/children-doing-25-hours-schoolwork-day-average
