Early math instruction may unintentionally favor boys

For decades, researchers have questioned whether boys and girls are born with the same natural ability in math. In 2005, cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Spelke took a firm stand, stating that there are no differences in overall intrinsic aptitude for science and mathematics among women and men.

Now, the evidence is even stronger. In a new study, researchers from Harvard University and several institutions across France examined math performance in more than 2.5 million French schoolchildren.

The team found that at the very beginning of first grade, boys and girls start off nearly equal in math. But just four months into formal math instruction, a small gap appears – and it keeps growing.

Nationwide study tracks the math gap

The research draws on a French government testing program that was launched in 2018. This nationwide effort tracked language and math skills of young students from first through sixth grade.

Over five years and across four student cohorts, the program gave researchers an unmatched view of early math development.

At school entry, French girls scored slightly better than boys in language. Math scores, though, were essentially the same.

“The headline conclusion is that the gender gap emerges when systematic instruction in mathematics begins,” Spelke explained.

Looking for gender differences

Spelke had already spent decades studying how young children understand numbers and shapes. Back in 2005, she wrote a major review for American Psychologist. The piece challenged the notion that boys are biologically wired for better math performance than girls.

“My argument was, ‘OK, if there really were biological differences, maybe we would see them in the infancy period,'” said Spelke.

She and her team always tracked gender in their studies, but they never found infant boys outperforming girls in math, or vice versa. Still, Spelke admitted that something could be happening later in development.

“The fact that there are no differences in infants could be because the abilities that show gender effects actually emerge during preschool,” she proposed.

Math instruction for boys and girls

In recent years, Spelke has turned her attention to how children learn counting and numbers in real classrooms.

Spelke partnered with Nobel Prize-winning MIT economist Esther Duflo to advise the Delhi office of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). The team is helping four Indian states create and test math lessons for children in preschool through first grade.

In France, she works alongside her longtime collaborator, neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene. Together, they serve on the French Ministry of Education’s Scientific Council, which helped develop the EvalAide testing program.

The idea was simple: measure where every child stands in math and language and use that data to guide better teaching.

Gender gap emerges in math

For this study, the team analyzed data from four full cohorts of first-graders entering school between 2018 and 2021.

What they found was consistent: no math gap at the time of school entry, a small but significant gap favoring boys after four months, and a steadily widening gap by second, fourth, and even sixth grade.

“It was even bigger in fourth grade,” Spelke said. “And in sixth grade it was bigger still.”

Interestingly, the gender gap in language shrank slightly after the first few months of school and stayed relatively stable in later years.

Ruling out old explanations

So why does the math gap grow with time in school? The researchers ruled out several familiar theories.

“If there was really a pervasive social bias, and the parents were susceptible to it, we would expect boys to be more oriented toward spatial and numerical tasks when they first got to school,” said Spelke.

But that didn’t happen. At school entry, there was no math gap. This points away from both biological and early social bias explanations.

An experiment during the pandemic

The EvalAide dataset offered other insights. French first-graders can be nearly a year apart in age, depending on when their birthday falls.

The team wondered if the older students were skewing results. They weren’t. The widening gender gap aligned more closely with time spent in school than with age.

Then came an unusual variable: COVID-19. The 2019 cohort missed the final 2.5 months of first grade due to lockdowns. That gap year created a natural experiment.

“With less time in school, the amount of the gender gap grew by less than it did in the other years where there wasn’t a long school closure,” said Spelke.

Confirming the math gender gap

The cohort also began school just after a national education crisis. In early 2019, French students had scored lowest among 23 European countries in math, according to international rankings.

In response, the French Education Ministry – guided by its Scientific Council – called for more math teaching in kindergarten.

Sure enough, a tiny math gender gap appeared in fall 2019 among new first-graders. That gap hadn’t shown up in 2018 but was still present in 2020 and 2021.

Problems in early math instruction

The study doesn’t pinpoint a single cause, but its message is clear: differences in math achievement between boys and girls seem to grow as a result of what happens in early school instruction.

“We still don’t know what that is exactly,” Spelke said. “But now we have a chance to find out by randomized evaluations of changes to the curriculum.”

The findings put pressure on education systems to ask hard questions about how math is taught in the early years – and what needs to change to make it fair for everyone.

The full study was published in the journal Nature.

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