The influence of socio‐economic background and gender on school attainment in the United Kingdom: A systematic review

Abstract

This narrative systematic review examined relationships between school attainment, socio‐economic status and gender in the United Kingdom from 2000 to 2012. The influence of socio‐economic status was considered at the individual and school level, while gender was examined at the individual level. To ensure consistency among included studies, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) was selected as the attainment measure. Following screening and the application of inclusion/exclusion criteria, 23 studies were included in this review. The most common measures of socio‐economic status were parental occupation, parental education and individual/school mean of economic, social and cultural status. This review found that individual and school level factors of socio‐economic status were consistent in the magnitude and direction of their influence over time. Gender was also a statistically significant indicator of attainment. However, variation was evident in the effects of gender according to the PISA cycle, UK country and subject. This review also provided a critical discussion on the quality of included studies, questioning study reliability owing to variation in reporting sample sizes, data manipulation and summary statistics. The review concluded greater consistency in reporting PISA results, especially descriptive and summary statistics would improve comparability of studies within and between PISA cycles, transparency of methodological approaches and the overall reliability of studies.

Inadequacies in the SES–Achievement model: Evidence from PISA and other studies

“…According to Hopfenbeck et al (2018) a substantial number (109) of the articles classified as secondary data analyses of PISA (430) explored educational inequalities relating to SES. In a systematic review, Early et al (2019) reviewed 23 UK studies on PISA published between 2000 and 2017 of which 19 included single, composite or school‐level measures of SES or social class.…”

Mothers' and fathers' views on the importance of play for their children's development: Gender differences, academic activities, and the parental role

“…Other research has found that parents encourage schoolwork in girls more than boys (Varner & Mandara, 2013); and mothers have higher educational expectations of girls than boys (Raley & Bianchi, 2006). Our findings may explain why in the United Kingdom, at least, girls currently outperform boys academically (Erin et al, 2020; GOV.UK, 2021).…”

An examination of the levels of work ethic in the university context across the United States of America, Korea and China

“…Whilst at school, there might not be initially any differences between boys and girls (Freeman, 2004), but progressively males achieve higher scores in mathematics and female students do better at reading (OECD, 2014). In addition, in a systematic review of 23 studies examining the relationship between gender and school achievement in the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2012 utilising data from the three-yearly Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (Early et al, 2020), gender was found to be a predictor of achievement, with girls achieving greater scores in reading than boys across the five PISA cycles whilst boys were reported to outperform girls in math, also in all five cycles of PISA. In a study into gender gaps in college English composition and algebra in the United States of America, females were found to score higher in both courses than male students (Ndum et al, 2018).…”