Exploring gender gap and school differential effects in mathematics in Chilean primary schools

ABSTRACT

Despite the systematic recognition of large gender gaps in favour of boys in mathematics performance in Chile, the role of schools in explaining this gap has been comparatively underresearched. This paper analyses a longitudinal dataset to explore within- and between-school variation of Chilean primary schools in promoting attainment and progress of girls and boys. In order to reflect the hierarchical nature of the educational data, multilevel modelling is used, with 163,044 students, nested within 3,355 schools, within 310 municipalities to fit raw, contextualised attainment, and value-added models. The weak evidence indicative of gender differential school effect in progress in Chilean primary schools was interpreted as non-substantive. However, differences in effectiveness played a significant role, as girls progressed more than boys in less effective schools, but the opposite was true in more effective schools. Finally, the study concludes that the Chilean gender gap needs to be addressed mainly beyond schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Differential effects
• gender gaps
• multilevel modelling
• value added
• Chilean primary schools

Acknowledgements

I thank Prof. Sally Thomas and George Leckie at the School of Education, University of Bristol for their advice and useful comments on the paper. I also thank Ernesto San Martín and Alejandro Carrasco from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile for sharing the data for secondary analyses. The insightful comments from two referees and the Editor are also gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Ma described a sizable male advantage of 15.99 mean score points, and a standard deviation above 20 score points.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ESRC under the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) 2017 Postdoctoral Fellowships Scheme: Levelling the playing field: assessing through equity the quality of Chilean schools [ES/P009611/1].

Notes on contributors

Bernardita Muñoz-Chereau

Bernardita Munoz-Chereau is a Research Fellow in Education at the Department of Learning and Leadership, IOE-UCL, and an Honorary Research Associate at the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol. Prior to this position, she was a ESRC-GCRF Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Education, University of Bristol, where she also completed her PhD in 2013. Her research is concerned with inequality in education, addressing fairer ways of comparing school performance for improvement and accountability purposes, particularly value-added approaches in Chile and other contexts. Bernardita is also a prolific author of children books with more than 30 titles published in Chile and the rest of Latin America.