This became the pervasive idea in Australian educational policy for about the next twenty-five years. The practices of ‘the best’ girls’ schools were spread throughout the education system to improve educational outcomes for girls. And it worked. By the early 1980s, girls educational attainment was increasing dramatically compared to that of boys. It was a resounding success and from there the idea just spread further and further and further.
Suddenly, about 1995, somebody suddenly realized that boys weren’t doing very well in school anymore. This is when it became noticeable – once it was noticed, they started looking back a few years and realized it hadn’t just started happening. In fact, boys’ educational attainment had started slipping in the early 1980s, just as the increase for girls started to become very noticeable.51