An extended time limit for completing maths and computer science exams at Oxford University have had a positive impact on the grades of female students.
Extended durations for exams have been introduced by the mathematical and computer sciences departments at the university in response to a growing gender gap, especially in final year exams, The Sunday Times reported.
Students were given longer 105 minutes instead of 90 minutes to complete exams for the first time last year "with no change in length or difficulty of questions" and the university said it has noted better results among women since that change.
The change to maths exams follows a decision by the history department to replace a traditional exam with a "take-home" paper, also done in an effort to try to boost results for female students.
The move was criticised as "sexist" by some academics for implying that women were the "weaker sex", the newspaper noted.
Of all subjects at the world-famous university, maths has one of the biggest gender variations in results.
Just seven female maths finalists achieved firsts last year compared with 45 men.
This means that 21.2 per cent of women on the course graduated with first-class degrees against 45.5 per cent of men.
Maths dons at Oxford looked at whether "shorter exams may particularly disadvantage women" and pointed out that exams were not supposed to be "a time trial".
Internal documents obtained under the UK's freedom of information laws show the decision to extend the time of examination papers had the intention of reducing the disadvantage to "students most sensitive to time pressure and stress".
The document said, "It is thought that this might mitigate the gender gap that has arisen in recent years, and in any case the exam should be a demonstration of mathematical understanding and not a time trial".
Time pressure is thought to have more of an impact on female students than male.
The university said it intends to continue with the extended time frame for exams.
Oxford University said in a statement, "The departments are not drawing any firm conclusions from the first year's data. However, third-year female students did show an improvement on their second-year marks. While there is clearly more progress to be made, the departments will continue with the longer papers for the foreseeable future, monitoring the exam data carefully".
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