evidence: Northern Ireland’s school system is perceived by many as high performing, with the most recent report from the Chief Inspector of the Education and Training Inspectorate highlighting how the system ‘continues to work very well for tens of thousands of learners’. However, the report also acknowledges that ‘too many students are left behind’ and there is undue variation in the quality of provision and educational outcomes for particular groups of learners. [...] There are also differences in the rates of underachievement according to community background. Just over a third (37.9%) of Protestant boys with FSME achieved five GCSEs at grades A*-C or equivalent including English and maths, compared to 46.7% of their Catholic counterparts. Northern Ireland also has a significantly higher proportion of 17-24 year olds who have no qualifications than the other UK countries. [...] _______________________ [1] Burns, S., Leitch, R., Hughes, J. (2015) Education Inequalities in Northern Ireland Belfast: Queen’s University Belfast, Harland, K., McCready, S. (2012) Taking Boys Seriously – A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Male School-Life Experiences in Northern Ireland Bangor: DE and OECD (2015) The ABC of Gender Equality in Education Paris: OECD Publishing