It’s not just OECD countries

The Paula Principle emerged for me from looking at OECD data. This shows conclusively how general the trend is for girls and women to do better than boys and men in education. But OECD countries are relatively wealthy, and not typical of all countries.
I’m in Morocco at a meeting of the World Committe on Lifelong Learning. I’ve just learnt that girls here already outperform boys at the level of the baccalaureate. Moreover Faoud Chafiqi, a researcher who also works in the education ministry, reported that girls’ aspirations for higher education are far stronger than boys. I assume, obviously, that the same tide is happening here as we have seen in OECD countries, as girls first catch and then overtake boys – the question is how fast. I don’t know enough about this and similar countries, so need to dig around for trends. But I can say that the PP rang strong bells with the Uruguayan and Swiss representatives – though they had different reactions to it!