PISA 2006: Reading Literacy - How ready are our 15-year-olds for tomorrow’s world?

Gender

On average, girls in New Zealand had higher reading literacy than boys (539 and 502 score points respectively), with a difference in means of 37 scale score points. This gender difference in favour of girls was observable for all the countries which participated in PISA. The average gender difference across OECD countries was 38 score points. The OECD countries with the largest gender difference in PISA 2006 were Greece (57 score points), Finland (51) and Iceland (48). Those with the smallest gender differences were the Netherlands (24 score points), the United Kingdom (29) and Denmark (30).

Figure 3: Distributions of New Zealand reading literacy achievement in PISA 2006, by gender

An examination of the performance of New Zealand 15-year-old boys and girls in terms of proficiency levels shows that the differences between them are more pronounced among low achievers. It can be seen in Figure 4 that the proportion of boys achieving at Level 4 and 5 is around three-quarters that of the girls: 34 percent of boys compared with 46 percent of girls were able to complete difficult reading tasks. However, at Level 1 and below, the proportion of boys is nearly double that of girls: almost 20 percent of boys were unable to demonstrate proficiency in reading tasks above the simplest level, compared with around 10 percent of girls.

Figure 4: Reading literacy proficiency levels in New Zealand in PISA 2006, by gender

Table 2: Trends in New Zealand reading achievement, by gender 

Note: Standard errors appear in parentheses.

The only significant change since 2000 has been in the mean reading achievement of New Zealand girls, which dropped somewhat from 2000 to 2003. The 2006 figures are all similar to those from 2003, and the gender difference of 37 scale score points is not significantly different from that of either 2003 or 2000.

The mean reading literacy score of girls in Australia also decreased by 14 score points from 2000 to 2006. However, whereas boys’ scores in New Zealand have remained relatively stable, the mean score of Australian boys decreased by 18 score points over the same period.

The consistent pattern of gender difference in reading literacy performance is also found in other international studies:  New Zealand Year 5 students assessed by PIRLS in both 2005/2006 and 2001 had differences in mean scores in favour of girls that were among the largest to be observed internationally (see Chamberlain 2007).