Classroom teaching may be driving a gender gap in math performance, and the effect starts from the moment children begin school, a new study finds.
The study, published July 11 in the journal Nature, included data on the math skills of more than 2.5 million first-grade children in France. It revealed that, while girls and boys started school with a similar level of math skills, within four months, boys performed significantly better than girls. That gap quadrupled in size by the end of the first year of formal education.
