Boys improve their grades if they share a class with many girls

A study has detected this curious statistical trend.

The years as a student are demanding, especially when we have to attend compulsory education, and the pressure to obtain good results can exhaust some boys, especially at exam time.

However, scientific studies have shown that some habits, such as practicing physical exercise or eating well, can increase school performance. Well, a recent study has shown that boys who study in a classroom with a lot of girls do better in school..

Boys do better academically if there are girls in the class.

Few people would say that to improve boys' academic performance there should be a lot of girls in their class. Many probably think that rather than helping them to concentrate, they could be a distraction. But this is not what science says, according to research, boys perform better and get better grades if there are many girls in class.

Adolescence is a complicated stage in which many changes occur, not only physical but also psychological. In this phase of identity search, many adolescents begin to relate to girls, as it is a key stage for the development of sexuality. And what connection does this have with academic results?

Surprising as it may seem, boys do better academically the higher the proportion of girls in the classroom. This research was conducted by a team of sociologists at Radboud University (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), and involved a sample of 200,000 young people.

To obtain these results, the scientists analyzed reading tests from more than 8,000 secondary schools in different countries. The data obtained indicate that in those schools where more than 60% of the students were girls, there seemed to be a better school environment and, as a consequence, the boys obtained better results..

A study affirms that women override the rationality of men.

According to the researchers, it would be this good school environment that causes boys to obtain better grades in classrooms with more girls. However, another study, carried out only a few months ago, claims that women override men's rationality, so the presence of girls in the classroom should have the opposite effect.

The study was published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, and involved 21 students from Zhejiang University in China. The participants viewed about 300 images featuring female faces. While half were physically attractive, the other half were not. The group had previously decided which women were attractive and which were not. Afterwards, the participants had to divide an amount of money between each image while their brainwaves were measured.

The men were more generous to the good-looking women, and in many cases unfairly so.. In situations of unfairness, they took longer to decide. The brain wave results indicated that, when the subjects had contact with attractive women, the reinforcement area, which has to do with pleasure and reward, was activated.

• You can learn more about this brain region in our article: "Ventral tegmental area: anatomy, functions and disorders".

The relationship between sport and academic performance

The results confirming that boys get better grades if there are many women in their classrooms may seem surprising. However, there are many variables that can lead to good academic results for students, not only the presence of girls and boys..

In this sense, a person's habits influence his or her academic performance and grades. One example of this is physical exercise. And the fact is that practicing it not only influences the psychological well-being of individuals, but also improves memory, concentration and increases brain activity, as you can see in our article "The 10 psychological benefits of practicing physical exercise".

Several studies have concluded that sport is beneficial for improving productivity in the classroom. A recent study also found that playing sports helps to relieve anxiety and get better grades.

These conclusions were presented by the American College of Sports Medicine, and the research was carried out by Saginaw Valley State University (United States), which analyzed the habits of 266 students of this institution and connected them with the results on the GPA scale, an average of the numerical scores used in the United States. This average ranges from 0.0 to 4.0.

Also in children and adolescents

The results showed that people who exercise regularly (whether fitness, running or yoga) score above 0.4 points on this scale.

But these results not only affect university students, but also children and adolescents, according to other studies, such as the one published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which included 5,000 boys and girls from the United Kingdom, Scotland and the United States. For this study, their scores in math, English and science were taken into account when they were 11, 13 and 16 years old. The more physically active children performed better in all three disciplines. It seems that in the case of boys, just 17 minutes of daily physical exercise was already significant. In the case of girls, 12 minutes a day was enough.