WRITING TASK 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on this task

The two bar charts show the percentages of male and female students in secondary and higher education for four different regions in the world.

Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where relevant.

You should write at least 150 words.
Sample Answer:

The two bar charts demonstrate the proportions of boys and girls in two broad categories of education in four different regions of the world.

In general, it is apparent that there are more girls than boys in either secondary or higher education across all the four areas, with two exceptions.

In secondary education, Europe has by far the highest percentages of boy and girl students – 95% and 100%, respectively – which are 9 and 5 times that of their peers in Sub-Saharan Africa. The situations in Latin America and East Asia are comparable – between 40% and 50% for both genders. While the former has slightly more girls than boys, the reverse is true for the latter.

Turning to higher education, although Europe still takes the leading position, the percentages among the four regions are quite close to each other. Whereas Europe beats Sub-Saharan Africa by threefold (45% to 15%) in terms of female percentage, there are always a fractionally larger proportion of students, regardless of their gender, in Latin America than in East Asia.

In summary, the number of students tends to shrink dramatically when they are entering higher education. And it seems that developed countries have a significantly higher percentage of male and female students than many developing ones.