Last summer’s GCSE results confirmed two trends which concern me professionally: that of girls outperforming boys and the success of single-sex girls’ schools over all others. In my own teaching of English in a mixed grammar school, OFSTED’s report Boys and English has also set me thinking.

I decided to investigate pupils’ perceptions of success in relation to gender in a Year l0 class of nine girls and 16 boys. The results have troubled me.

Ostensibly, as a unit required for GCSE English coursework, I gave them the opening to a short story and introduced them to Ann, the main character. Intelligent and beautiful, she had studied for six years at medical school with unflagging application. The class was asked to complete the tale.

The vast majority of pupils - boys and girls - proceeded to avoid Ann’s success and even actively promoted her failure. Those who avoided her success were fewer than the students who killed her off.

Of course, pupils are not immune to the ills of society outside the school gate, so their responses could have been prompted by many influences, butI Of 25 essays, in only four did Ann achieve success, and then solely in either her professional or her personal life: none wrote of success for the protagonist in both domains. The writers of the other essays saw Ann as a failure in 15 cases (10 boys and 5 girls) and as secondary to the story in six cases - thus avoiding her success or any decisions about her.

In the cases where failure followed - and that was the vast majority - her failure usually involved death; in six cases Ann was a victim of murder or suicide, and in another four essays, she was the killer.

From the boys, the other five failures in her life included being confined to a wheelchair and thus reduced to dependency on men, and becoming a prostitute - again, one dependent on men. In one case “Dr Ann” was rescued and led into “bright, glorious sunshine” by a male nurse!

The five girls who introduced death had: a suicide and three murders with Ann as victim and the fifth had her as murderer. The suicide was occasioned when Ann found her man was in bed with another man.

There were six pupils who ducked Ann’s success and “failed” her that way. Four boys introduced a minor character to oust her from her central role.

Of the two girls, one had Ann become a nurse - in spite of her six years at medical school! The other made Ann’s career incidental to her discovery of her dad’s jealousy at her success.

Three boys - the most confident and noisiest in the class - surprised me by attributing success to Ann.

Only one girl in the class could find a rosy outcome for her; winning a paternity suit against the deserting father of her child, Ann became a successful lawyer.

It was clear to me that the girls had internalised male sexual stereotyping.

Six boys out of 24 pupils suggested that while Ann had been six years at medical school, she had succeeded as a nurse. Still, being a doctor means being a man!

Sexual expression by women and female success are seemingly incompatible in my pupils’ minds. Almost all found difficulty in reconciling ambition, competence, intellect, success and sexuality with being female.

So, in spite of the reality which is girls’ achievement at GCSE, in life it seems they are not expected to succeed.

Philip Hoby teaches English at Bexley Grammar School in the London borough of Bexley.