On average, 19.7 per cent gave the correct responses to questions taken from GCSE curricula for maths, science, history and geography.
The poll, of 500 parents of schoolchildren for Britannica Online, the online version of Encyclopaedia Britannica, found men scored better than women, answering on average 27.2 per cent of questions correctly compared with mothers who answered 12.1 per cent correctly.

Not surprising. Men are more inclined to store useless information and trivia. I was once with a friend and his girlfriend, a teacher, watching Mastermind, and while we both did reasonably at the general knowledge the teacher said that general knowledge was pointless. Amazing that she was a teacher.

Surely it is more important to be able to use a book when required rather than remember what is in it? Use the information when you need to.

Questions included the number of chromosomes in a body cell (46), the name of the first Labour prime minister (Ramsay MacDonald) and the name of the unit of force (Newton).

The most difficult of the 10 questions appeared to be: "What is the name given to the lines on a synoptic chart?" to which 13 per cent of those polled gave the correct answer of "isobars".

This compared with more than a third (34 per cent) who knew that "mode" was the measure of average which could have more than one value.

I find that surprising.

In my experience, more women seem to remember useless information such as fashions and silly soap opera facts, while men remember the important things like maths, physics and Red Dwarf quotes.

Of course such generalisations are statistical. They apply to populations, not individuals.

But GCSE-level education should be understood by pretty much everyone, and is the sort of basic, fundamental knowledge that should just be known.

Many people would regard maths, physics and Red Dwarf quotes as useless information. Though useless information depends on what you do and what you regard as important.

In my experience, more women seem to remember useless information such as fashions and silly soap opera facts, while men remember the important things like maths, physics and Red Dwarf quotes.

The best way parents can support their children is to provide fast and easy access to a source of accurate, reliable information, whenever it is needed, as well as making sure they are researching safely and responsibly.

That is so getting sigged!

Are we talking about the ability to retain and recall facts by rote, or the ability to retain and process information depending on the situation? What are goals of GSCE qualifications? Do they reach this?

I did O levels, and then it seemed that the way to get a decent pass was not to process information, but to just recall what you were taught. By the time I got to degree level, the processing of information was far more important. I have no idea how GSCE fits in to all this.