Jersey boys bucking Uni trends

Wednesday 22 October 2014

Although girls are outnumbering boys by up to a third at UK universities, figures from Jersey show that the Battle of the Sexes is a lot closer here than on the mainland.

A report in the Telegraph earlier this year warned that boys were becoming a "disadvantaged group" in the UK because a third more girls had applied for places at Uni.

But the gender gap isn't as wide here in the Island - latest figures show that just over half the number of places filled by Jersey students are girls and 46% are boys.

Last year's GCSE results in England showed a record gender divide - almost a quarter of exams saw girls get grades A* or A, compared with less than 18% of boys. Here boys are doing much better although the girls slightly outperformed them in almost all A level subjects in 2013 apart from IT where boys appear to be more switched on.

Girls proved to be better read in English literature - 89% got grades A* to C compared to 85% of boys.

The numbers didn't add up so well for boys in Maths - 78 % of them got grades A* to C, 10% fewer than girls.

Girls used more of their brain cells in Biology too - 80% of them got A* to C grades compared to 68% of boys.

Both sexes proved to be like-minded when it came to psychology though - 74% of girls and boys got grades A* to C.