Disadvantaged students
are more likely to report
skipping classes or days of school and arriving late
for school, and are less likely to have a strong sense
of belonging and hold positive attitudes towards
school. For example, in OECD countries, while
85% of advantaged students agreed or strongly agreed
with the statement “I feel like I belong at school”, only
78% of disadvantaged students did. In some countries
these differences are more pronounced. For example,
in France, Korea and Lithuania, the difference between
the percentage of advantaged students who agreed or
strongly agreed with the statement and the proportion
of disadvantaged students who did is larger than
15 percentage points.
While disadvantaged students may have fewer resources
at home through which they can benefit from their
motivation to learn, there are established strategies to aid
disadvantaged students at school, including: developing
conditional, incentive-based programmes aimed at
promoting attendance at school (targeted policies);
creating a culture that values effort, perseverance
and motivation (policies inherently more universal
in nature); and building strong partnerships among
families, teachers and local communities to ensure that
socio
-
economic disadvantage does not prevent these
students from flourishing.
Girls
underperform in mathematics, compared with
boys, in 37 of the 65 countries and economies that
participated in PISA 2012; in OECD countries, girls
underperform boys by an average of 11 points. However,
this gender gap between the average 15-year-old boy
and girl masks even wider gaps among the least and
most able students. In most countries, the most able
girls lag behind the most able boys in mathematics
performance.
Gender gaps in drive, motivation and self-beliefs
are particularly worrying because these factors are
essential if students are to achieve at the highest levels;
and the relationship between drive, motivation and
mathematics-related self-beliefs on the one hand, and
mathematics performance on the other, is particularly
strong at the top of the performance distribution. Unless
girls believe that they can achieve at the highest levels,
they will not be able to do so.
Although boys show higher mean mathematics
performance, differences within the genders are far
greater than those between the genders. In addition,
the size of the gender gap varies considerably across
countries, suggesting that strengths and weaknesses in
academic subjects are not inherent, but are acquired
and often socially reinforced.
Given girls’ lower levels of confidence in their own
abilities, school systems, teachers and parents should
try to find – or create – more effective ways of bolstering
girls’ beliefs in their own abilities in mathematics, both
at school and at home. In the short term, changing
mindsets may require making mathematics more
interesting to girls, identifying and eliminating gender
stereotypes in textbooks, promoting female role models,
and using learning materials that appeal to girls.
Over the longer term, shrinking the gender gap in
mathematics performance will require the concerted
effort of parents, teachers and society as a whole to
change the stereotyped notions of what boys and girls
excel at, what they enjoy doing, and what they believe
they can achieve.
More must be done to engage disadvantaged students and girls in learning mathematics
PISA 2012 results in focus

Source: OECD