Better Test Scores with a Same-Gender Teacher?

Abstract

The literature on gender speci c educational achievement indicates that primary school teaching has become more and more a female profession and that the lack of male role models in primary education may negatively in uence the school achievement of boys. This study examines if children's math test scores are higher if they are taught by a teacher of their own gender. For this purpose we use unique Dutch data on 2586 primary school children and identify the same-gender e ect by estimating an innovative within class between child gender estimation model. The empirical ndings indicate that children's math performance is not in uenced by the gender of their teacher. JEL-codes: I20 · I21 · I29