This year's Leaving Cert results released last week show some very encouraging trends. The biggest headline news was the 72% increase in the numbers taking the higher level maths paper over the past three years from 16% in 2011 to 27% this year. There were two reasons for this, firstly the introduction of the bonus CAO points for a grade D or higher and also the impact of the new Project Maths curriculum.
There's another exciting trend in the results this year and that is that girls are now excelling over boys in most science and engineering subjects. Boys had a higher honours rate over girls in only five Leaving Cert subjects - Maths (by a narrow margin), Applied Maths, Latin, Agricultural Economics and Engineering. In all of the remaining 54 Leaving Cert subjects girls had a higher success rate.
The number of girls who took Physics this year at higher level jumped by 19% compared to a 9% increase for boys. Similarly in Chemistry female participation rose by 11% compared to 2% among males.
There was an even bigger shift in subjects once seen as near-exclusively male. The number of girls taking construction studies at higher level rose by 15% to 451, applied maths by 22% to 412 and engineering by 30% to 203. The relative numbers taking these subjects are small but the growing trends of increased female interest is remarkable. Were these increases to be maintained year on year it would transform female participation in the STEM subjects.
In contrast, the number of girls doing home economics at higher level actually dropped by 3% to 7,954 this year. One of the biggest disparities was in languages where there was a 5% gap in the greater female numbers taking Irish and French at higher level.
Both UCD Engineering and UCD EGA are very concerned at the lower female numbers entering First Year Engineering in 2013 and will soon publish a Report on this issue.While this issue will take a lot of positive initiative to put right, the trends in this year's Leaving Cert results show that it is possible to attract more girls to do Engineering.
There's another exciting trend in the results this year and that is that girls are now excelling over boys in most science and engineering subjects. Boys had a higher honours rate over girls in only five Leaving Cert subjects - Maths (by a narrow margin), Applied Maths, Latin, Agricultural Economics and Engineering. In all of the remaining 54 Leaving Cert subjects girls had a higher success rate.
The number of girls who took Physics this year at higher level jumped by 19% compared to a 9% increase for boys. Similarly in Chemistry female participation rose by 11% compared to 2% among males.
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Both UCD Engineering and UCD EGA are very concerned at the lower female numbers entering First Year Engineering in 2013 and will soon publish a Report on this issue.While this issue will take a lot of positive initiative to put right, the trends in this year's Leaving Cert results show that it is possible to attract more girls to do Engineering.
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