The Guardian – Sally Weale
“Boys starting school are being outperformed by their female classmates, with more than a third failing to reach the expected level in writing and a quarter struggling with numbers, government figures show. The gender gap among the youngest schoolchildren has narrowed marginally, but girls continue to lead the way in all early learning goals, with 74.3% achieving the expected level of development compared with 58.6% of boys. For those achieving a good level of development, the gender gap has reduced from 16.3 percentage points in 2014 to 15.6 percentage points this year, but early years experts warned that it remained “substantial” and have called for action to alter the trend.”(more)