You may have a more important study if you do that, with a different finding to what you have just using the composite total.
Why was the Pearson's chi-squared test used (table 1) for analysis of variance? For while gender and in this study education are categorical (group) the data being evaluated is continuous and interval data and so an ANOVA or MANOVA by group is the method of analysis of variance. (Tabachnick, B.G., Fidell, L. S., & Ullman, J.B. (2007). Using multivariate statistics (5th ed.). Pearson.)