Mathematics as a gateway: the role of gender-segregated secondary education in shaping girls’ STEM trajectories

This paper reports two conceptual replications examining how gender-segregated secondary education in New Zealand relates to students’ mathematics-related outcomes. Study 1 analyses enrolment data from the University of Auckland (UoA; 2016–2020) to investigate single-sex secondary school attendance rates by gender across Engineering and comparison programmes (i.e., Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Business, and Psychology), presenting descriptive results as in the original study at the University of Canterbury (UC; 2005–2017). We also use logistic regression to further examine whether the observed differences across programmes are beyond chance. At UoA, the rate of female Engineering students who had attended single-sex secondary schools (42%) was comparable to that in Computer Science (40%) and exhibited a small difference ( d = 0.35) compared to the corresponding 56% at UC yet was significantly higher than in the remaining comparison programmes (~32%). In contrast, male students at UoA showed a similar single-sex secondary school attendance rate (~30%) across programmes. Study 2 uses the same New Zealand TIMSS 2019 data set as the original study but applies hierarchical linear modelling to explore mechanisms underlying mathematics achievement, offering insight into potential factors associated with mathematics-related participation. Our findings indicate a more nuanced picture. Confidence was a positive predictor of mathematics achievement across genders. In addition, the value–achievement association was moderated by school type for girls only, with girls in single-sex schools who highly valued mathematics tending to achieve somewhat higher scores than those in co-educational (mixed-gendered) schools.