School grades are influenced by gender, weight and origin
How unfair are school grades? Pupils in Germany receive better or worse grades depending on the socio-economic status of their parents, their ethnicity or gender.
School grades can be an important door opener when it comes to choosing a specific degree programme or securing an apprenticeship. However, a large-scale survey of more than 14,000 pupils in Germany now shows that grades are not always awarded fairly: Teachers apparently allow prejudices to influence their grading. This is according to data from the National Educational Panel Study. The long-term project has been observing a total of seven cohorts of German pupils since 2008. The data collected is intended to help gain a better understanding of how education progresses over the course of a lifetime and which factors influence the educational path.
A research team from the University of Bern and the University of Zurich focussed its analysis on a nationally representative sample of 14,090 young people who attended ninth grade in 2010. It compared the grades awarded by teachers with the results of standardised competence tests to find out whether some pupils had an advantage over others. The researchers then analysed the effects of various factors: gender, body mass index (BMI), parents' socio-economic status (SES) and ethnic background.
Gender bias was evident in the grades awarded by teachers in all subjects except chemistry. Girls had an advantage in German, maths and biology, while boys performed better in physics. A higher BMI was associated with significantly lower grades from teachers in every subject, while adolescents with higher parental SES received better grades. Pupils from ethnic minorities received lower grades in all subjects except biology. These disadvantages were even reinforced: for example, a boy with a high BMI from a home with a low social status who was not born in Germany usually received lower grades than a girl with a low BMI from a home with a higher social status who was born in Germany - regardless of actual ability.
Although the results cannot reveal the mechanisms behind this disadvantage of certain groups, they do indicate that the bias in grading is widespread in Germany. The researchers recommend that further studies should focus on why certain students receive lower grades and how such biases could be remedied in the classroom.
Spectrum of Science
We are a partner of Spektrum der Wissenschaft and want to make sound information more accessible to you. Follow Spektrum der Wissenschaft if you like the articles.
Original article on Spektrum.de
Experts from science and research report on the latest findings in their fields – competent, authentic and comprehensible.