Reducing Inequality or Creating greater Gap? Gender Difference in Cognitive Development and the Hong Kong Secondary School Places Allocation System Reform

In 2002, the Hong Kong Secondary School Places Allocation (SSPA) System made an important policy shift. The old strategy which allocates boys and girls separately was replaced by a new strategy that allocates boys and girls together. Using the HKPISA data, this paper investigates the within-school gender gaps in reading, mathematics and science literacy before and after the change of the SSPA system. Although girls consistently perform better in reading and perform worse in mathematics and science, surprisingly, we found that the within-school gender gaps in mathematics and science significantly increased instead of decreased as expected after the educational reform. Why a policy aimed to reduce gender inequality actually created greater gender gap? There’re two competing theories that can explain this puzzle. In order to examine these two alternative theories, we further use TIMSS2007 and PISA2009 data to focus on a certain cohort, and look into their cognitive gender difference at 8th grade and 10th grade.