The difference in reading scores among 15-year-olds ranged from eight points in Italy to more than 20 points in England, Greece, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.The report concluded: “In all OECD countries, 15-year-old males are more likely to be among the lowest-performing students in reading literacy. Andreas Schleicher, head of analysis at the OECD, said the research also revealed girls were better at overcoming social disadvantage.Girls were far better in reading ability. The gap in ambitions was more marked in Britain, where the respective figures were 63 per cent and 51 per cent.In Belgium, the Czech Republic and Denmark a quarter more girls than boys expected to get a lucrative white-collar job by the age of 30. Girls are more ambitious than boys when plotting their career paths while at school, the report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says.
At the age of 15, 66 per cent of girls from OECD countries had expectations of getting skilled white-collar jobs, compared with 58 per cent of boys. He recounts his tangled past and harried present in a voice that gives new life to the Southern Gothic novel.Odds: 4/1. A school massacre has turned Vernon from teen eccentric into scapegoat.

Grieving for a child, the perennially detached Kitty explores the bruising, male-dominated family history that has led to her sense of isolation.Odds: 10/1Vernon God Little, By D B C Pierre, Faber & Faber, £12.99D B C Pierre has a background mixed up enough to explain the feat of ventriloquism achieved in his debut. The novel is not so much a satire on media mores and public prurience as a study in solitude, projection and fantasy.Odds: 6/1Astonishing Splashes of Colour, Clare Morrall, Tindal Street Press, £7.99This small press in Birmingham strikes success with an improbably uplifting novel about depression and its sources. In this uncanny place, Kafka meets Coetzee (one of this year’s big Booker losers) as the idealistic hospital physician Laurence spars with the disenchanted Frank.Odds: 5/1Notes on a Scandal, Zoe Heller, Viking, £14.99In this acerbic and elegant tale, the thwarted busybody Barbara reports on the sexual disgrace that engulfs her fellow teacher Bathsheba, who takes as a lover a 15-year-old pupil. Through the adventures of Jimmy, Atwood takes us into a dystopia of climatic calamity. Here, bio-science beyond control has muddled the human and non-human.Odds: 3/1The Good Doctor, Damon Galgut, Atlantic Books, £10.99Galgut makes a striking comeback with this haunting account of a doctor’s ordeal in the backwaters of post-apartheid South Africa. Not every critic has agreed that Ali succeeds: Time magazine thought it cliche-ridden and “as dull as dhal”.Odds: 2/1Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood, Bloomsbury, £16.99The Canadian virtuoso aims at a second Booker win with a complex and effective exploration of a futuristic nightmare.

It’s been the bestselling Booker book for years.” The 2003 winner will be announced at a ceremony at the British Museum on 14 October, to be broadcast live on BBC2 and BBC4.BOYD TONKIN, LITERARY EDITOR, ASSESSES THE CONTENDERSBrick Lane, Monica Ali, Doubleday, £12.99Torn between Bangladeshi roots and East End reality, complacent older husband and militant young lover, Ali’s heroine Nazneen dominates one of the most widel discussed fictional debuts for years. To some extent we’ve been spoilt by just how well last year’s winner, Life of Pi [by Yann Martell], has done. Mr Higgs said he believed that book would have been a popular choice with the public for a prize often criticised as producing impenetrable winners.The books by Monica Ali, Zoe Heller and D B C Pierre were all good, he added, “but they are at the challenging end of the Booker. The writer D J Taylor and the broadcaster Francine Stock praised Turn Again Home by Carol Birch.For Professor Carey and the mountaineer Rebecca Stephens, Mark Haddon’s highly acclaimed novel about a boy with Asperger’s syndrome, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, was a favourite.Martin Higgs, the literary editor of Waterstone’s, also favoured Haddon. The philosopher A C Grayling, who said all his reading had suggested the traditional novel was “in very good shape”, put in a word for Frankie & Stankie by Barbara Trapido and for Crossing the Lines by Melvyn Bragg. But there was no book on the final shortlist he would want removed for Amis to go through.None the less, each of the judges admitted they had favourites they were sorry to see fail. Born in Bangladesh and living in London, she caused one of the publishing sensations of the summer with Brick Lane.She is joined by the newspaper columnist Zoe Heller, 38, with Notes on a Scandal, and Clare Morrall, who raises the hopes of all who despair at publishing’s obsession with the next bright young thing by securing her place with Astonishing Splashes of Colour at the age of 51.The other contenders are Damon Galgut, 39, from South Africa for The Good Doctor, and Peter Finlay, an Australian raised in Mexico by British parents, with Vernon God Little, published under the pseudo-nym D B C Pierre.Asked about the most contentious book of the year, Yellow Dog by Martin Amis, which divided critics, Professor Carey said it was right that Yellow Dog should have been considered.