Well, i dont think they cared about/had in consideration the gender of the students when they were developing the education system, but i am pretty sure it is proven females in general do better in school specially through 6-9 grade because puberty hits earlier so their brain also starts developing earlier which lets them be able to think more about the future and consequence of their actions hence doing better in school. Meanwhile in a lot of cases with since males take longer to fully develop their brain, they tend to do worse in school and since 6-9 are the basis of further knowledge it can be very complicated to ""recatch" the train" meaning they will do worse in the future as well. Despite this its proven that intelligence and academic performance although connected are not proportional because there are various types of intelligence and various teaching methods that could work better on different people. In the end Intelligence comes down to genetics and the life experiences/people around you and has very little to do with gender.