Why Do Indonesian Adolescent Boys have Poorer Schooling Outcomes than Girls?

The East Asia and Pacific Gender Innovation Lab (EAPGIL) carries out impact evaluations and inferential research to generate evidence on what works in closing gender gaps in assets, economic opportunities, and agency, and how closing these gaps can help achieve other development outcomes. Ultimately, EAPGIL seeks to increase the welfare of women and men in East Asia and the Pacific by promoting the uptake of effective policies and programs identified based on evidence. Policy Brief Issue 5 | November 2018

work harder, and get higher test scores in diverse contexts such as Chile and the United States. 3 Students with higher socioemotional skills, the set of attitudes and behaviors to manage personal and social situations, also have better educational achievement and cognition. 4 Adolescence is a crucial period in which mature mental abilities and socioemotional skills develop and influence both learning and future outcomes. 5 Other behavioral factors that could negatively influence learning -and gender differences -are students' perceptions of a negative classroom environment for learning, low educational aspirations, and behaviors that are not conducive to studying.

WHAT DID WE DO?
A team of researchers from the World Bank and the University of California, Davis, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia as well as local education authorities, collected data on mindsets and socioemotional skills, studying practices, education and career aspirations, grades, and family socioeconomic characteristics from 56,000 8th grade students studying in 2,100 public schools on the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatera. 6 These islands are home to 70 percent of the population. The data are the baseline for an impact evaluation of a pilot intervention aimed at improving students' mindsets and socioemotional skills.
Through support to improved socioemotional skills, the intervention may also positively affect schooling outcomes and long-term wellbeing, such as future job opportunities and income. 7 To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to measure socioemotional skills of Indonesian adolescents at such a scale. 8 We use these data to explore the relationships between mindsets, perceptions, socioemotional skills, schooling outcomes, and gender. While we cannot establish causal relationships, the data provide some patterns which may be policyrelevant.

WHAT DID WE FIND?
Eighth-grade boys have lower grades and miss more classes than girls. In our sample, boys' average grades are below girls' in all seven subjects, with differences ranging between 2 and 3 grade points, the equivalent of 0.34 and 0.55 of a standard deviation (Figure 1, panel A). 9 Most girls, rather than just a few excellent students, drive these differences since girls not only have The sample excludes Islamic schools and technical or remedial schools, which approximately 13 percent of students attend. However, it is representative of students attending public, secular junior secondary schools in Java and Sumatera. 7 For the details of the intervention, please visit www.worldbank.org/eapgil. 8 A pilot study of the currently-evaluated intervention collected measures of socioemotional skills for a smaller sample of 114 students. 9 As a benchmark, grades can range from 0 to 100, with 75 being the passing grade in most subjects. Girls' higher 2-3 grade points compared to boys is a large difference given that only 15 percent of students have grades below 75 -the passing grade -and that three quarters of students have grades within a 10-point range between 75 and 85. 10 Boys also miss more days on average: boys miss 1.5 days on average in the past month of the survey while girls miss 1.0 days. Boys and girls who miss at least one day of class miss an average of 2.7 and 2.3 days, respectively. suggest that there is a strong positive association between students' mindsets, perceptions, and socioemotional skills, and their grades. 12 The association is especially strong for growth mindset and learning orientation (the perception that effort to learn is valued in their classroom): an increase of one standard deviation in growth mindset and learning orientation correlate on average with an 11 As all the data presented in the graphs are from the "Getting to Know 8th Grade Students," references to the source will be omitted henceforth. 12 The association between grades and performance-avoidance orientation is negative given that the later reflects students' propensity to hide mistakes and pretend they know material (see definitions in table A.1.). Hiding mistakes is not conducive to learning and one may consider that lower performanceavoidance orientation is desirable. Each of the skills is also associated with a reduction in absenteeism (Figure 2, panel B). More of a growth mindset and higher learning orientation are also highly associated with lower absenteeism. This is the case for a higher sense of belonging to the school as well: an increase of one standard deviation in the score of sense of belonging is associated with missing 0.1 fewer days of school per month (a reduction of 8 percent of the 1.2 days that are missed on average). 13 13 48 percent of students in the survey missed at least one school day in the past month. Those who missed school missed 2.5 days on average.
Notes: Bars are coefficients from a regression of an outcome of interest -average of grades in panel A, number of missed school days in the past month in panel B -on standardized measures of mindsets, perceptions, and socioemotional skills that keep constant other measures and four demographic factors (age, sex, location in urban or rural areas, and location in Java or Sumatra). Slim bars are confidence intervals for the estimates at the 95-percent level; Coefficients are statistically significantly different from zero if they do not overlap the zero line. Standardized measures of mindsets, perceptions, and socioemotional skills have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1. In panel A, grades can range from 0 to 100, with an average of 79 and a standard deviation of 5. All coefficients are significantly different from zero at the 99-percent level but that of self-esteem and perseverance, which are not significant, even at the 90-percent level. In panel B, all coefficients are significantly different from zero at the 99-percent level but that of effort belief, which is not significant, even at the 90-percent level. Lower educational aspirations may also contribute to lower levels of boys' learning. Educational aspirations are the future years of education students wish to achieve and that drive their effort to reach that goal. 14 Adolescent students aspiring to complete secondary and tertiary education in Ethiopia and India, respectively, ended up completing more schooling than those with lower educational aspirations. 15 Given the strong link between educational aspirations, effort and school attendance, it is possible that higher aspirations may also be linked with greater learning while school and better grades.    cost and easily scalable. The impact evaluation associated with the baseline survey used in this brief will test the effectiveness of two such interventions.
The first is a 6-week growth mindset based curriculum that includes comics to introduce the topic of the week, guided classroom discussions, student reflection, small group discussions, and other interactive activities. The second includes additional tools and activities that classroom teachers may integrate into their daily interactions with students in order to reinforce the impacts of the 6-week curriculum.
2. There might be some social expectations that discourage help-seeking outside of school and lower academic motivation for boys at this educational level. A better understanding of the gender specific impacts of social expectations on students' behaviors is needed.

Self-esteem
The degree of positive self-evaluation of the student's own worth

Growth mindset
The extent to which students believe that they can improve their abilities and become smarter through dedication and hard work

Sense of belonging
The extent to which students feel they are accepted members of the school community

Effort beliefs
The extent to which students believe that exerting effort will lead to improved ability

Perseverance
The extent to which students keep up effort to achieve their goals despite difficulty, delays, and failure

Learning Orientation
The extent to which student perceive that classmates and teachers value hard work, learning progress, and learning from mistakes

Performance Avoidance Orientation
The extent to which student perceive that classmates and teachers disparage mistakes and lack of knowledge

Mindset, perception, skill Definition
Note: Socioemotional skills are a set of learned attitudes and behaviors that allow people to manage personal and social situations effectively. Mindsets are ways in which students perceive their own abilities, in particular regarding how smart they are, and whether they can change it or not. Perceptions of the classroom environment refer to students' perceptions of what teachers and classmates value in the learning process. Measured constructs that are featured in the table fall into one category or overlap over several ones.