KEY POINTS:
Twelve-year-old girls outperformed boys in 70 per cent of tasks in a major national writing test, again highlighting a worrying gap in educational achievement between the sexes.
Almost half of the Year 8 girls got 100 per cent in the Otago University National Education Monitoring Project spelling test, compared to about a quarter of the Year 8 boys.
The gender gap in the results of the writing tasks - which also involved writing creative stories and examining the layout of formal letters - was cited as a "serious concern" in the report.
The Government-funded project assesses primary-age achievement in 15 subjects on a four-year cycle.
The writing report, released yesterday, showed the biggest difference in ability between boys and girls of all the subjects.
Paul Baker, rector of Waitaki Boys High School in Oamaru and a member of the ministerial reference group developing guidelines on boys' education, said the figures were critically important because reading and writing were crucial in assessment across the board.
Dr Baker said boys were lagging behind even in the traditionally male-dominated subjects of technology and physical education because of the rise in written tests. "A lot of the assessment in a subject like technology now requires people to write, whereas a lot of boys just want to make things."
The Otago University study, which tested 2878 children at 255 schools last year, showed the gender difference in writing widened as the students aged.
At Year 4, male students performed less well than females in 50 per cent of the writing tasks, compared to 70 per cent of tasks in Year 8.
Girls were more positive about their writing in Year 4 and were more likely to enjoy doing it at school and in their own time.
In Year 8, the trend continued, with girls also more positive about their spelling ability, how good their teacher thought they were at writing and reported reading their writing to others more often.
Report co-author Terry Crooks said not all boys were bad at writing.
He said girls and boys were represented in the top achievers in all tests but the majority of girls did better than the majority of boys.
The Ministry of Education's manager of curriculum and learning, Mary Chamberlain, said reducing the gender gap was a "key area" before the next assessment in 2010, as well as reducing the gap between the highest and lowest achievers.
Mrs Chamberlain said the report showed positive progress in several areas, including reducing the gap between Maori and Pasifika students and their Pakeha counterparts.
In writing, the gap in achievement between Pakeha and Pacific Island students almost halved between 2002 and 2006. Disparities between high, medium and low decile schools reduced in the past four years.
The percentage of Year 4 students who said they liked to write in their own time rose between 1998 and 2006.
Reports on listening and viewing and health and physical education were also released yesterday.
GIRLS VS BOYS
In a spelling test of 25 words, such as "straight", "December" and "really":
* 28 per cent of Year 8 boys answered all correctly.
* 46 per cent of Year 8 girls answered all correctly.
In a punctuation test in which candidates added capital letters, apostrophes and speech marks to a text:
* 36 per cent of Year 8 boys scored 50 per cent or more.
* 62 per cent of Year 8 girls scored 50 per cent or more.
SOURCE: Otago University National Education Monitoring Project.
