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As I recall there were, pre covid, two large scale international studies and one purely UK that found that there was a very clear “grade inflation” in teacher assessments and examinations for females. All the studies showed that compared to “blind marking” or assments made on work where the sex of the student is concealed, girls received inflated marks of assessments. Interestingly the assessments for boys tended to be in line with the “blind marking”, so in fact teachers seem to be more accurate in assessing boys work. They are also more likely therefore to more accurately predict grades. The process is very definitely about being more generous to girls, benign sexism to use an old fashioned term. The hypotheses for this benign sexism didn’t of course include the feminist ideology in our education system, as the authors of all the studies had set out with a feminist hypothesis. However as this benign sexism seems to affect many countries it may give more credence to suggestions either of “presentation” girls work is better or more attractively presented or it is a reward for actual or perceived better behaviour in class or it’s a reward for compliance. All in all I’m sure it’s a combination of these with, in more “woke” cultures the added influence of feminist notions of encouragement for girls to counter “oppression”.
What of course it does show is that any notion that boys are somehow favoured in education is completely false. In fact the “patriarchy”, should it exist clearly does the reverse and the trend is seen in a wide range of societies, even those often accused of discriminating against girls. Which suggests that this privileging and over praising females runs deep in human psychology.