Women are a third more likely to go to university because the school system is failing boys, higher education chiefs have warned.
The gender gap on university campuses will be bigger than ever this autumn after girls snapped up 52,330 more places than boys within 24 hours of A-level results being released.
University admissions bosses blamed the growing divide on a lack of suitably qualified boys emerging from secondary schools.
They said boys were being ‘let down’
at school – and implicated teaching practices, the exam system and a
shortage of male teachers.
A-level
results issued yesterday showed that boys passed 191,431 A-levels with
top A*, A and B grades while girls notched up 246,059.
But
boys have cut into girls’ lead following changes to the exam system
which meant a return to end-of-course exams and a shift away from
bite-size modules.
Mary
Curnock Cook, chief executive of UCAS, the university admissions
service, warned the ‘potential of young men is somehow being let down’
by the school system.
UCAS figures show that 179,920 men have enrolled so far compared with 232,250 women – roughly a third more.
This suggests a campus gender gap, with the first-year population comprising 56 per cent women and 44 per cent men.
Both
men and women are accepting places in greater numbers than last year
but acceptances among women are growing faster.
Women are taking up 4
per cent more places against men’s 1 per cent rise.
‘What
we now see is that women are a third more likely to enter higher
education and in fact women are more likely to enter higher education
than men are to apply,’ Mrs Curnock Cook told BBC Newsnight.
‘That
surely can’t be a good thing in terms of the balance in the potential
of young women and men in their future career and life.
‘Young
women outperform young men right through the schools system, so through
primary school and secondary school, and surely the potential of young
men is somehow being let down through that system, and of course we see
it in university admissions.’
She
called for an investigation into the ‘underlying causes’, saying: ‘They
must be to do with teaching and learning, they must be to do with
curriculum or qualifications or the assessment regime.
'We want to see
more young men coming through the system to balance it out.’
As
well as the gender divide at university, Mrs Curnock Cook highlighted
the ‘huge imbalance’ in the number of men going into teaching and called
for initiatives to address the shortage.
Alice
Phillips, president of the Girls’ Schools Association, said male
primary school teachers could inspire young boys and help convince them
‘education and learning is fun’.
But there were ‘increasingly few’ of
them in schools, she said.
UCAS
has previously warned weak demand for higher education among men is
becoming a more pressing issue than under-representation of youngsters
from poor homes.