Exploring social and psycho-social factors that might help explain the Afro-Caribbean boy underachievement in England

•Afro-Caribbean boys underachieve compared to their girls throughout the Caribbean diaspora.•There are distinct gender-achievement patterns for Afro-Caribbean adolescents in England.•Boy underachievement could be accounted for in math and science but not English.•Few variables identified by Caribbean literature moderated the gap.

For over four decades, it has been documented that Afro-Caribbean boys in England underachieve compared to their female counterparts. Caribbean literature has pointed to social and psycho-social factors that might be important in explaining some of this difference. To examine the extent to which these factors are important even throughout the Caribbean diaspora, this quantitative study explored the role these social and psychosocial factors played in explaining the achievement gap between Afro-Caribbean boys and girls residing in England. Findings demonstrated that only a few of these factors identified in Caribbean literature were important for attenuating the gap.