UK: GCSEs blamed for boys not going to university

Story here. Excerpt:

'Tens of thousands of boys who ought to be capable of succeeding at university never make it because of school exams, according to a report today.

The Higher Education Policy Institute report suggests that GCSEs, introduced in 1988 in place of O-levels, appear to favour girls because of the style of teaching, content and types of question. The exams are the "most likely cause" of an achievement gap between the sexes that starts at school but carries on into adulthood, it concludes. The result is that men are less likely to go to university and less likely to do well when they get there.

"I think we are in danger of creating an underclass," Professor Bahram Bekhradnia, institute director and co-author of the report, writes in today's Observer. "Higher education brings social benefits as well as academic ones. If you have been to university, you tend to be in better physical and mental health. It has a terrific socialising effect and, by not going to university in such large numbers, men are being deprived of that. I think it is a real shame."'