The charts give information about the proportions of boys and girls of a school who achieved high grades (A or B +) in respective courses. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.

The bar graph illustrates the changes in the percentages of

boys

and

girls

gaining impressive grades in five different subjects in 1996 and 2000.

Overall

, there were distinct gender differences across these five disciplines: science underwent an improvement in the performance of

girls

,

while

the arts and humanities had a higher

proportion

of high-performing

boys

. The percentage of high-achieving

boys

was generally higher than that of

girls

in 2000. Humanities saw the most considerable increase in the

proportion

of high-achieving

boys

, becoming the top-performing course, with the figure nearly doubling to 45% in 2000.

By comparison

, the figure for

girls

dropped by 8% to 25%. Similar changes happened to the arts, in which the percentage of

boys

who gained high scores rose significantly to 22%, and the figure for

girls

slightly declined to 25%. Languages were another area which experienced a drop in the percentage of high-achieving

girls

, down to 31%,

while

the

proportion

of high-achievers for

boys

remained unchanged at about 21%. There were contrasting patterns in the performance of science and maths for both genders. Around one-third of the

boys

obtained satisfying grades in these science courses in 1996, higher than the figures for other subjects.

However

, only around 18% and 17% reached

this

level in 2000.

In contrast

, the

proportion

of high-achieving

girls

in these two courses climbed to 11% and 15% respectively,

although

these figures were still far lower than those for the other three areas.