Do boys or girls progress faster?
Answer
The chart shows NOTDEC Uganda children's progress through school — focusing on Primary Education because far fewer have so far reached Secondary level.
Age by Key Stage and Gender
On average, boys enter Primary 1 at age 6.5 years — slightly earlier than the girls at 6.9. But, they don't maintain that lead — not reaching P7 until average age 15.1 compared with 13.9 for girls. By the end of Primary, therefore, the girls have a lead of something like 14 or 15 months.
And on into Secondary Education, the news for boys only gets worse. By S4, the girls' lead is 1.5 years or 18 months.
Caution Figures should be treated with care. The date of birth of most children is precisely known, but for others it is a guess — perhaps just a month and year, in a few cases only a year. Calculating averages from such data is rather risky. There is no reason to believe that this has distorted the results significantly, but it is impossible to be certain.
Note: longer bars mean slower progress!