Abstract

This article analyses the relative performance of female and male students in lower secondary school examinations sub-Saharan Africa. It presents information for three key areas, namely the numbers of female and male students sitting and passing lower secondary school examinations in each country from which overall pass rates can also be computed. Regarding the actual numbers of students passing examinations, there is female inequality (where the passes gender parity index <0.97) in 58% of the 36 of the 44 mainland countries in SSA for which data is available. These 21 countries account for 54% of the total population of this group. Gender equality exists in only 6% countries (two out of 36 including Nigeria), but whose combined population amounts to 21% of the total. Male inequality (where the passes GPI>1.03) prevails in 36% of countries (13 out of 36) which account for 25% of the total population in the region. These findings highlight the heterogeneity of female and male examination performance across SSA. However, while around one half of female students in SSA do not perform as less as well as male students, it appears that gender examination inequalities are decreasing quite rapidly and that it is quite possible that more female than male students will be taking these examinations within the next decade.

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