Things have changed on the media front. On GCSE results day 15 years ago, I was asked on to the BBC R4’s Today programme to discuss the inexorably widening gap between better grades for girls and poorer performance by boys. I said the phenomenon reflected a problem throughout the education system but it originated in primary schools, where the interests and needs of boys were often considered as being of secondary importance and male teachers had effectively become an extinct species. I said that I had known numbers of women teachers since the 1970s who had made no secret of favouring girls – on the grounds that it was a feminist duty to repair women’s historic educational and social disadvantages.