The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Female teachers and male students are found to perform significantly better but with gender effects among teachers and students.
This is one of the findings of Royal Education Council (REC) on Teacher Needs Assessment (TNA) 2011 and Annual Status of Student Learning (ASSL) 2011that shows differences in performances of teachers and students which are compared with other gender counterparts.
The report states ‘gender equality’ has for long been a major goal in Bhutan. Yet, gender difference persists both in attainment and choice of the course of study with regard to education and training, is what researchers worldwide have shown.
For the TNA, 425 teachers in English, 472 in Maths, 454 in Science, and 507 in Social Studies, which come to 38% female and 62% male participated in the test.
Based on total scores, female teachers were found to perform better than their male counterparts in English, be it in Content, Pedagogy and General Skills.
Also female teachers were found better in Social Studies Pedagogy as well as General Intelligence while male teachers were better in Maths.
From the data analysis on 2,035 teachers of class IV, VI and VIII from 378 schools which assessed performances of 33,256 students in English, Maths and Science.
ASSL 2011 scores across the teacher gender shows that “there is statistically higher performance for students with female teachers.”
Over 20271 girls and 19645 boys participated in ASSL 2011 to study the gender-wise differences among students in subjects like English, Mathematics and Science across classes.
In 2010, boys outperformed girls in Maths in classes VI and VIII and in class VIII Science although the difference was meaningfully small.
The trend of ASSL 2011 remained similar to that of 2010. Girls performed significantly better than boys in classes IV and VI English but equally performed in class VIII English.
“Boys outperformed girls significantly in Maths and Science across all tested except in class IV Science,” the report stated.
It further stated, while there is no gender effects in English, girls tend to get 3.2% points worse in Maths and 2.4% worse in Science than boys.
Generally it is believed that women do not fare well in fields of Maths, Science and Technology while boys do not perform well in language and reading ability.
