Professor Becky Francis on why Gender Action is a force for good

Professor Becky Francis is an expert on inequalities in education and is currently the Director of the UCL Institute of Education, one of our founding partners. She was one of Tes' 10 most influential people in the world of education in 2018. Following her keynote speech at our launch, Professor Francis spoke to us about inequalities in education and the power of Gender Action.

Professor Becky Francis is best known for her work on gender and achievement. Her policy research and analysis has focused particularly on school quality, and academies policy, in relation to social equality. Her academic expertise and extensive publications centre on social identities (gender, ‘race’ and social class) in educational contexts, social in/equality, and social identity and educational achievement, and gender theory. 

In her talk at our event, she looked at how inequality in education is not simply about one gender doing better than the other, but how inequalities in opportunity and achievement are uneven across groups. The graphs below draw their data from the Joint Council of Qualifications.