Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to close the attainment gap between boys and girls.

This government is determined that all children and young people, regardless of their gender or background, have the opportunity to go as far as their talents and hard work will take them.

Rather than implementing policies that focus specifically on the educational performance of boys, the government has introduced far-reaching education reforms that set the highest expectations for what all pupils will achieve. The department has put in place a stretching national curriculum and world-class qualifications, so that more pupils study to age 16 those academic subjects that most enable progress to higher education.

The latest statistics show that between 2016 and 2017, the proportion of boys achieving the expected standard in GCSE English and maths rose by 1.2 percentage points (to 60.3%), compared to a 0.5 percentage point increase amongst girls (to 67.6%). These statistics are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/revised-gcse-and-equivalent-results-in-england-2016-to-2017.