An Analysis of Gender Differences in Academic Achievement of Elementary and Middle School Students

This study has the following three topics: first, gender differences in academic achievement among elementary and middle school students; second, gender distribution at each performance level on the basis of the results of academic achievement assessment and changes in the achievement level for each gender with grades; third, the percentage of boys and girls at each performance level (superior and inferior groups). The results of this study can be discussed as follows: First, while girls achieved better performance for the subject of Korean over all grades from the 3rd in elementary school through the 2nd grade in middle school, there was no gender difference in performance for the subject of mathematics over all grades except the 3rd grade. Another result is that gender differences in academic performance vary by school level. Second, Gender differences were compared at each academic achievement level for Korean and mathematics. Results indicated that, while boys and girls showed a similar trend in the average total score from the 3rd grade in elementary school through the 2nd grade in middle school, gender differences in the percentage of students in the superior group (with score of 90s or higher) for the subjects of Korean and mathematics became larger from a certain moment on. That is, the percentage of girls began to be remarkably higher in the superior group for the subject of Korean at the 5th grade, and the percentage of boys began to be higher in the superior group for the subject of mathematics at the 2nd grade in middle school. Third, the phenomenon that girls achieved better academic results for each subject than boys was more remarkable in the inferior group than in the superior group.