It took a few years before we got anybody to take this seriously – to begin with, those involved in advancing the education of girls objected strongly to any attempts to talk about boys, because they worried that a shift in focus would harm girls, but by the late 1990s, even they were starting to say “Hang on – boys are now further behind girls than girls were behind boys in 1975. This really is a problem.” People started to seriously look at the problem. In 2001, the Australian Parliament convened a full parliamentary inquiry into the crisis surrounding the education of boys. It delivered its report in 2002.
In the space of 27 years (1975 to 2002) Australia went from producing government reports on why girls were being failed by the education system and what needed to be done about it to producing government reports on why boys were being failed by the education system and what needed to be done about it. There was a radical change in education in that period.
And what it boils down to is what can best be described as an increasing feminization of education.
Educational policies were deliberately changed to match what evidence showed worked best for girls.