Abstract
This article examines the effects of social economic class and faith identity on the gender gaps in attainment for those British-born learners of Pakistani heritage that left a British state maintained Islamic faith school in 2015, 2016 and 2017. This research article shows that both social economic class and faith identity exert a far greater influence on the attainment performance of Pakistani boys and girls than gender does its self. Furthermore, this research article assesses whether there is an interaction effect between gender and social economic class or gender and faith identity in terms of their impact on educational attainment gap of British-born Pakistani students. The article asserts that, across all three cohorts, there is no evidence of any systematic variation in the size of the gender differences in educational attainment that exist across either social economic class or faith identity. Simply in terms of the effects of social economic class, faith identity and gender on educational attainment, it is argued that these can actually be understood in terms of a simple 'main effect model'. The implications of this for initiatives aimed at addressing gender differences in educational attainment are considered briefly in the conclusion.