Girls outdo boys in Junior Cert results

THE 2009 Junior Certificate results have again highlighted the better academic ability of female students, who got better grades in nine out of the 10 most popular subjects at higher level.

The statistics provided by the State Examinations Commission, which issued results to more than 55,500 students on Wednesday, show that girls did better than boys in all higher level subjects except geography, environmental and social studies, woodwork and metalwork.

Some of the biggest gaps between those getting honours grades (A, B or C) at higher level are in languages, including English in which 82.2% of female candidates got honours compared to 70.1% of males, and an 83.7% honours rate for female higher level Irish students compared to 74.6% for their male counterparts. The gap was also wide for German (81.2% as against 68.4%) and French (73.3% compared to 64.8%).