A roughly equal number of the scores of year four girls and boys was analysed in the PILNA 2021 writing assessment: 10,210 year four girls’ scores and 10,498 year four boys’ scores.

Figure RWF4.2 shows the average writing performance of year four students by gender. On average, year four girls (491.92, SD = 47.30) scored higher than year four boys (476.54, SD = 49.81). Year four girls also scored higher, on average, than year four boys in writing performance in 2015 and 2018.