BARNSLEY’S girls outperform their male classmates by a greater margin than anywhere else in South Yorkshire in the earliest years of their school life, education statistics reveal.

A report details the percentage of pupils who achieve a ‘good level of development’ during early years and foundation stage - the first stages of school life up to the age of five.

In Barnsley 68.5 per cent of all pupils made the desired level of progress during early years which in itself was only just behind the national and regional average figures.

But when broken down by gender, only 59.4 per cent of boys achieved the grade, compared to 77.6 per cent for girls. This gives a ‘gender gap’ of 18.2 per cent.

This compares to a gap of 12 per cent in Doncaster, 13 per cent in Rotherham, and 13.4 per cent in Sheffield.

It means Barnsley’s gap is greater than all of its neighbours, as well as the Yorkshire average and the national average (13.7 per cent.)

The figures also show a larger than average gender gap in the results of year one phonics tests when Barnsley is compared to its neighbours and averages across the region and country.

Barnsley Council executive director Rachel Dickinson said work was underway to address the gap, and that one factor may be that in Barnsley there were significantly more boys with special educational needs than girls.

“In 2017 early years attainment improved for both boys and girls in each area of learning,” she said.

“The percentage of boys achieving a good level of development improved by three percentage points and for girls, the improvement was two percentage points.

“We are aware that more needs to be done to improve outcomes for boys. There is a narrowing the gap project running in a number of schools which have significant gaps for particular groups of children.

“Through our early years networks we also run projects to support partnership work across schools and early years providers focusing on reducing the gap.

“The gap between boys and girls reduced in fifteen out of the seventeen areas of learning in the 2017 early years assessment, and, by continuing to focus on this we hope to see similar improvements in 2018.

“It also needs to be recognised that the proportion of boys with special educational needs was much higher than for girls in both the early years and year one phonics cohorts in 2017.

“Of the year one children who took the phonics check, 19 per cent of boys had special educational needs, compared with just eight per cent of girls.

“In the early years group 13 per cent of boys had special educational needs, in comparison with four per cent of girls and this profile will have contributed to the gaps in outcomes at these early stages of children’s education.”