Attainment gap grows

17th September 2010, 1:00am

The achievement gap between boys and girls aged 7 and 14 in Wales has widened again, this year’s assessment results for key stages 1 and 3 have revealed. The gap closed last year in the core subjects of English, maths, science and first-language Welsh, from 8.4 per cent to 8 per cent for seven-year-olds, but it has now gone back up to 8.7 per cent. For 14-year- olds, the gap has narrowed from 9 per cent to 7.8 per cent, but the validity of these results has been called into question by the Welsh inspectorate, Estyn.