Boy trouble: gender gap in Hong Kong public exam results cannot be ignored any longer

Who would want to be a boy in the education race in Hong Kong? According to a report on the 2017 Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) examination published last month, female candidates outperformed males by a whopping 16 percentage points in meeting the minimum entry requirements for university.

Just under half of all female day school candidates (49.2 per cent) gained the magic “3322” results in Chinese and English language, maths and liberal studies, compared with one-third (33.1 per cent) of boys. That gap has persisted since the DSE was launched in 2012. In last summer’s exams, the gender difference was, as usual, most significant in Chinese language – 66.5 per cent of girls achieved the minimum level 3, compared with 45.6 per cent of boys. This, and the need for the same minimum in English, is the major barrier for boys heading to university.

University Grants Committee statistics show that the percentage difference in women and men in first-year undergraduate programmes has widened from 3.4 per cent in 2011/12 under the old academic structure to 8.2 per cent in 2016/17. Women comprised 54.7 per cent of undergraduates at Chinese University – 1,575 more women than men on campus – and 53 per cent at University of Hong Kong. In the prized fields of medicine, dentistry and health, women claimed 60 per cent of all places.

The DSE report reveals some surprising facts. There was no barrier to progression for girls in some subjects boys are traditionally expected to excel in. In maths, slightly more girls than boys met the minimum level 2 for university. Even in physics, girls fared better than boys at level 3 and above, while in the more practical design and applied technology, 37.4 per cent of girls scored at least level 3 while boys lagged at just 15.6 per cent. It is true that among the students achieving the highest grades, the gap reverses slightly in favour of the smartest boys, in maths and the sciences.