Band 8+: The bar chart below shows the percentage of students who passed their high school competency exams, by subject and gender, during the period 2010-2011. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The bar chart below illustrates the rate of students who passed their high school competency exams, by subject and gender, during the period 2010-2011.

Overall, the most favoured subject by the girls was computer science, while it was mathematics for the boys.

First of all, the most prominent trend was in computer science, where the rate for the girls was the highest at 56.3%, even though the rate for the boys was only 42.1%. Furthermore, the percentages for mathematics and foreign languages for both genders almost hit 50%. Other than computer science, geography and chemistry had big percentage gaps between both genders, respectively, where in chemistry, the percentage for girls was higher, and the opposite was true for geography.

Turning to physics, the boys’ percentage accounted for 34.6%, followed by the girls at 36.7%. Moving on to history, the rate for boys was represented at 22.9%, lower than the rate for girls at 25.6%. This meant that the subjects with the most students passing were mathematics and foreign language.