After just four months of school, boys show better performance in mathematics than girls, as a large -scale study from France shows. According to this, a gap between the sexes, which did not exist before schooling, opens in primary school in primary school. The gender gap is therefore not possible for any gender -specific skills, but the handling of teachers and students with mathematics in primary school. The researchers advocate to tackle this gap in childhood education as early as possible. For this purpose, teachers are to be trained their prejudices and a gender -neutral math formation should be taught.
There is a gap between boys and girls early on: in the first school years, boys show better mathematical achievements than girls, as former studies from the USA and France had shown. As a result, boys later take over average more frequently from the scientific-technical area and professions in which an understanding of math is important. According to studies, both gender stereotypical prejudices of parents and teachers as well as a fear of mathematics are to blame for this gap. On the other hand, it is demonstrably not due to the innate competence of the children: boys naturally have no better sense of numbers, rooms or logic as a girl. But when exactly does the gap between the sexes begin to open?
Differences measurable after four months
Researchers around Pauline Martinot from the Université Paris Cité have investigated this question and have collected and evaluated even more extensive data on the math skills of children. They analyzed the test results of 2.65 million children between the ages of five and seven, who visited the first and second class at schools in France between 2018 and 2022. “The mathematics tests included numerical detection, counting, comparison of numbers, knowledge of the number, problem solving, arithmetic and geometry,” explains the team.
It showed that at the beginning of school there was practically no difference between students and students in their average mathematics. But that changed rapidly: just four months after the start of school, boys performed remarkably better than girls. This gap between the sexes grew in the course of the first school year and had already quadrupled after twelve months, as Martinot and her colleagues found. This trend was shown in all types of school all over France and in all math tests and was regardless of the age of the children when school enrollment. Scientific professions and a high socio -economic status of the parents increased the effect.
These results suggest that it is not the school maturity or a privileged origin of the boys who help them to better perform in the first school years, but above all gender. The researchers conclude that boys are preferred in the formal environment of school formation by teachers – possibly prejudices due to the stereotypes that still exist in the heads of the teachers.
How can girls take the math end?
In view of their findings, Martinot and her colleagues request that this gap to be closed as early as possible in the training of the children. “Improving teacher training should undoubtedly be one of the most effective levers,” the researchers write. The teachers should be trained their prejudices and a gender -neutral math formation should be taught. For example, teachers should pay attention to girls and boys to participate in the math lessons equally and without value and leave them more time to solve the problem.
Possibly measures could even prevent the math pieces in kindergarten by taking up the children and parents in advance. For example, you could provide you with tasks that generally promote curiosity and problem solving, the team said. This is intended to help overcome false clichés and emphasize the natural mathalent that is present in both sexes – before girls in the school environment lose trust in this talent.
Source: Pauline Martinot (Université Paris Cité) et al.; Nature, DOI: 10.1038/S41586-025-09126-4
