Gender and Educational Performance: The Malaysian Perspective

National Examination results at ages 12, 15 and 17 in 1996-2000 have shown that girls perform better than boys across almost all school subjects and enrolments of male and female students at university levels have also shown that the percentage of female students has increased from 50 in 1996 to 56 in 1999. It has been found that girls seem to do better on sustained tasks that require memorising abstract, unambiguous facts and rules while boys are more responsive to open-ended tasks which are related to practical and realistic situations that require them to think for themselves.