The gender gap in education shows no signs of narrowing, with girls outperforming boys in virtually all Junior Cert examination subject at higher level.
The gap was widest in English, German and Italian, where the difference in grades between girls and boys was 11 per cent or more.
The gap was narrower in languages such as Irish, French, Latin and Spanish, but was still significant. Almost 83 per cent of girls in higher-level Irish attained an honour, compared to 74 per cent of boys.
The grade breakdown told a similar story. Over 13 per cent of girls got an A in Irish and 12 per cent achieved the same grade in English. For boys, the A rate was 7.9 per cent in both subjects. In art, craft and design, the A rate for girls was almost double that of boys at over 26 per cent.
At ordinary level, boys had higher failure rates overall. Again, languages posed a problem, with over eight per cent of boys failing the ordinary-level Irish paper, compared to just four per cent of girls.
The French exam had a higher failure rate for both genders at almost 11 per cent for girls and 17 per cent for boys. German and Spanish told a similar tale.
The higher-level gender gap was narrower in maths, business studies and geography. While almost 66.9 per cent of boys managed an honour in higher-level geography, girls edged ahead, with 67.6 per cent of them getting an honours grade. Subjects like science, technical graphics and technology are no longer the male strongholds they once were - although the gap between girls and boys was relatively narrow in these subjects.
Just under 3 per cent more girls than boys achieved an honours grade in higher-level maths and that gap grew to 5 per cent in science.
While at ordinary level, the female failure rate was higher in subjects like technical graphics, metalwork and classical studies, in most other subjects, this was not the case.
At higher level, boys came out on top in just three subjects: material technology, metalwork and environmental and social studies.