School classes dominated by girls not good for boys

A higher proportion of girls in classes at lower secondary school is positive for girls' careers later in life, but has a negative effect on boys. They take shorter educations and work in less well-paid jobs.

03.05.2013 - Sigrid Folkestad

Professor Kjell Gunnar Salvanes wanted to identify the socio-economic effects of the composition of classes in lower secondary school. Are ninth-year pupils influenced by their classmates, and what gender differences can be identified?

The 'good' jobs

Together with Professor Sandra E Black at UCLA and Professor Paul J Devereux (University College Dublin), Salvanes has carried out an empirical study of boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 16 to see what effects differences in the composition of school classes have in the long term.

'The big picture we are trying to paint in the long-term research project, of which this study is part, is of why children end up being so different when they grow up; why do some of them get the good jobs, while others have more tedious lives?' asks Kjell G Salvanes of the Department of Economics at NHH.

This work is part of a larger, more long-term research programme in which Salvanes and his colleagues are looking at many different types of institutions and factors - for example family background, school and the workplace - that influence to a greater or smaller extent where people end up as adults.

Influence each other

'Specifically, the main goal of the study of lower secondary school classes is to try to find out how young people in the same year and at the same school influence each other. To identify these effects, we use the fact that the gender distribution and the composition in terms of social background vary to some extent randomly in each school over a period of years.'

The researchers have data on Norwegian lower secondary school classes and (as datasets) on who chooses an academic education, their status in the employment market and their income when they are in their mid-twenties.

They can thus observe the long-term effects of being in a school class dominated by girls, and not just how this affects pupils' marks while they are at lower secondary school.

Journal of Labor Economics

The results of the study have been presented in the article 'Under Pressure? The Effect of Peers on Outcomes of Young Adults', which was recently published in the Journal of Labor Economics.

'One of the main findings of the study is that the proportion of girls seems to be significant - and in a way that affects the genders differently. A higher proportion of girls in a class is positive for girls in the long term, but negative for boys,' Salvanes says.

We know from before that a high proportion of girls results in both girls and boys getting better marks in school tests in the short term. Because the researchers also have data from school tests, they are able to see that the tendency is the same in this study as well.

An academic path

'But, for boys, the good marks for school tests are cancelled out by the long-term negative effects. What we see is that a preponderance of girls reduces the likelihood of boys choosing an academic path, and it reduces the number of years they spend in education.'

The results of the study show that the girls benefit from being in classes with many other girls, while the boys do not. Boys have a greater tendency to choose a vocational path in upper secondary school instead of studies that lead to university, regardless of their social background.

'They take higher education more seldom. They also end up in less well-paid jobs. The girls are more likely to take higher education and earn more than girls in classes where the majority are boys.

Disruptions and interruptions

The gender composition also has the opposite effect, i.e. girls whose school classes are dominated by boys lose something along the way. They choose a shorter education and earn less later in life. The effect is not as strong as for boys in girl-dominated classes, however.

'We know nothing about the reasons why this is the case, but we can speculate about them. One explanation for why it is negative for girls to have many boys in their class is that boys are more disruptive and interrupt teaching more. The girls are quieter in the classroom, but have less opportunity to concentrate on their school work,' says Salvanes.

On the other hand, a high proportion of girls in a lower secondary school class can be more disruptive for teenage boys, he believes.

'The presence of many girls will thereby have negative effects on the boys.'