Women are a third more likely to go to university because the school system is failing boys, higher education chiefs have warned.



The gender gap on university campuses will be bigger than ever this autumn after girls snapped up 52,330 more places than boys within 24 hours of A-level results being released.



University admissions bosses blamed the growing divide on a lack of suitably qualified boys emerging from secondary schools.



Increasing gap: Travis Alabanza-Behard opens his exam results and hugs friend Hannah Wilson in Bristol yesterday as it emerged even more girls than boys will head to university this autumn

They said boys were being ‘let down’ at school – and implicated teaching practices, the exam system and a shortage of male teachers.

A-level results issued yesterday showed that boys passed 191,431 A-levels with top A*, A and B grades while girls notched up 246,059.



But boys have cut into girls’ lead following changes to the exam system which meant a return to end-of-course exams and a shift away from bite-size modules.



Picture of Britain: 52,000 more young women than young men have been accepted on courses this year compared to 46,000 in 2013

While the number of boys getting places after their emails increased slightly while the number of girls' increased sharply



HOW ELITE COLLEGES GROW FASTER

T op universities are expanding faster than others as record numbers of teenagers ‘trade up’ to better degree courses.

Britain’s most selective universities have already accepted 4,430 more students than last year.

The growth is partly fuelled by students rejecting their original choice and picking a more prestigious university after doing better than expected in their A-levels, with 320 applicants ‘trading up’ so far – 5 per cent more than at this point last year.

Some 17 universities in the 24-strong elite Russell Group are advertising places on more than 3,000 courses.

‘Higher tariff’ institutions have seen a 4 per cent rise in student numbers so far, up 4,430 to 124,150. Less prestigious universities are also growing, although at a slower rate.

Mary Curnock Cook, chief executive of UCAS, the university admissions service, warned the ‘potential of young men is somehow being let down’ by the school system.



UCAS figures show that 179,920 men have enrolled so far compared with 232,250 women – roughly a third more.

This suggests a campus gender gap, with the first-year population comprising 56 per cent women and 44 per cent men.

Both men and women are accepting places in greater numbers than last year but acceptances among women are growing faster.



Women are taking up 4 per cent more places against men’s 1 per cent rise.



‘What we now see is that women are a third more likely to enter higher education and in fact women are more likely to enter higher education than men are to apply,’ Mrs Curnock Cook told BBC Newsnight.



‘That surely can’t be a good thing in terms of the balance in the potential of young women and men in their future career and life.



‘Young women outperform young men right through the schools system, so through primary school and secondary school, and surely the potential of young men is somehow being let down through that system, and of course we see it in university admissions.’

She called for an investigation into the ‘underlying causes’, saying: ‘They must be to do with teaching and learning, they must be to do with curriculum or qualifications or the assessment regime.



'We want to see more young men coming through the system to balance it out.’



As well as the gender divide at university, Mrs Curnock Cook highlighted the ‘huge imbalance’ in the number of men going into teaching and called for initiatives to address the shortage.

The number of first-years is expected to top 500,000 for the first time after the Coalition made 30,000 extra university places available

Alice Phillips, president of the Girls’ Schools Association, said male primary school teachers could inspire young boys and help convince them ‘education and learning is fun’.



But there were ‘increasingly few’ of them in schools, she said.

