Dutch girls more often underestimated in school advice than boys

The correct education level for girls in the Netherlands are more often estimated lower in their school advice than that of boys. In the 2017/2018 school year, girls were more often at a higher school level in the third class of secondary education than their school advice said. Boys less often did better than their teachers had expected, Statistics Netherlands reported on Tuesday.

Since the 2014/2015 school year, the advice from a primary school teacher served as a guideline for pupil's admission to secondary education. Final primary school exams are only taken after the teacher's first advice. That advice can then be adjusted if the final exam scores are higher than the school advice.

According to Statistics Netherlands, in the 2014/2015 school year more girls than boys scored higher on their final exams than their school advice expected. Yet the school advice for girls were not adjusted much more often thant those for boys, 2.8 percent for girls and 2.5 percent for boys.

In the 2017/2018 school year, 16 percent of girls in the third year of secondary education were at a higher level than their school advice, compared to 10 percent of boys. Nearly 21 percent of girls in the third class of VWO received a lower school advice, compared with 14 percent of boys, for example.

The situation is reversed for boys: 14 percent of boys in their third year of secondary school were at a lower level than their school advice stated, compared to just under 9 percent of girls.