Educational outcomes of UK LGB and heterosexual adolescents: exploring gendered differences and mechanisms

Abstract Studies in the United States have repeatedly found that gay men and older cohorts of lesbian women have higher educational attainment than their heterosexual peers, whereas bisexual individuals and younger cohorts of lesbian women often face educational disadvantages. It remains unclear whether these findings apply to other national contexts and through which mechanisms differences in educational outcomes by sexual identity arise. Using UK longitudinal data from the ‘Millennium Cohort Study’, this study explores, for the first time in a European setting, the link between sexual identity, gender, and educational outcomes during adolescence. By comparing the achievements, subject choices, and educational expectations in a sample of heterosexual and Lesbian Gay and Bisexual students aged 16–18, we find evidence that gay boys outperform heterosexual boys in terms of grades and expectations. Unexpectedly, similar outcomes are also found for bisexual boys. In contrast, as lesbian girls have comparable grades and expectations to heterosexual girls, our findings do not support the idea of a ‘lesbian penalty’ in educational outcomes during high school in the United Kingdom. Overall, no single theory fully explains educational differences by sexual identities, emphasizing the necessity to account for the interplay between sexual identity and gender in evaluating students’ outcomes.