France: Study Reveals Math Teachers Give Girls Higher Grades Over Boys For Same Answers

Article here. Excerpt:

'According to a study, girls in French secondary schools are benefiting from a marking bias by math teachers and the author of the study sees this as a positive approach.

Math teachers gave girls grades that were 6% higher than what was given to boys for the same work, says the study by London School of Economics and Paris School of Economics.

The study claims to have analyzed the records of almost 4,500 11-year-olds at 35 secondary school also lead researchers to conclude that the inflated grades encouraged girls to take science subjects later in their school careers.

Students in France at age 11 are to take standardized tests at the beginning of the school year.

The test is graded externally and the examiner did not have information on the student’s name, gender or socio-economic background, so the results of this study were free from any bias.

In those anonymous tests, the boys outperformed the girls in math.'