Well, that’s interesting. It’s only a recent phenomenon. Up until about 1975, it was exactly the other way around. Boys were the ‘privileged class’ in Australian education. Boys were the ones who overwhelmingly went to university. Boys achieved higher marks at school.
In 1975, the Australian School Commission published a report. It was called Girls, School, and Society and it examined in detail why girls were underperforming in education and set forward strategies to deal with that problem. One of its main approaches was to look at the girls schools that were doing well – bucking the trend so to speak – and to look at their methods. And to suggest strongly that schools should adopt the methods that worked best for girls as their standard practices to address the educational disadvantaged being suffered by girls.
In essence, schools were to be made more ‘girl friendly’.