Are girls getting the education they deserve? It’s a fair question, in light of this week’s release of school rankings that show the percentage of 2016 Queensland graduates who received an OP1-5, the highest entrance scores for tertiary courses.

The three top performing schools in Queensland were all boys’ colleges. Their sister schools didn’t fare nearly as well.

Of the OP eligible students at Brisbane Grammar School, 56 per cent achieved a score of 1-5 while next door at Girls Grammar, the figure was 43 per cent. Brisbane Boys’ College’s 55 per cent outranked Somerville House’s 45 per cent, and St Joseph’s College Gregory Terrace’s 52 per cent bettered All Hallows’ School’s 33 per cent.

Admittedly, these schools have different principals and teaching staff — and yes, some offer academic scholarships to attract the brightest students — but factors less obvious could be influencing outcomes.

Forget distinctions between independent and state schools, and discount socio-demographic variations, because I am talking about a national issue around the way we educate girls.

Social conditioning kicks in early.

We profess to value gender equality in Australia, yet we praise little girls for being pretty and boys for being strong.

media_camera Euphemia Montgomery enjoys playing with dolls but that doesn’t mean she can’t also aspire to being an engineer or a mathematician. (Pic: Mark Stewart)

By the time kids reach prep, they are stereotyping men and women, with research showing they assign gender to fire engines, makeup mirrors, hammers, scarfs and the like.

And how many times do we hear “stop playing like a girl” — whatever that means, it’s a bad thing — on the sidelines of boys’ sporting matches?

Particularly disturbing is a belief that becomes entrenched, an implicit bias that boys are smarter and more deserving than girls.

You only have to look at the wage gap between men and women to see how this plays out later on.

A study released last month shows that girls as young as six have gendered beliefs about intelligence.

University of Illinois psychologist Lin Bian read this story to 240 children, aged 5 to 7, then showed pictures of two men and two women and asked them to guess the star performer: “There are lots of people at the place where I work, but there is one person who is really special. This person is really, really smart.”

Interestingly, five year olds chose their own gender, but by age six, only boys did so.

Ms Bian also gave children the opportunity to play two new games, one for “really, really smart” kids, the other for those who “try really, really hard”.

Again, at age five, it was a level playing field, with both genders up for both games, but by age six, girls shied away from the “smart” game, saying “this isn’t a game for me”.

Ms Bian describes the results as “heartbreaking”.

However, they are consistent with other studies which prove girls are being short-changed.

Research from Israel found primary teachers mark boys higher on maths tests than girls, leading to more boys choosing STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects and feeling confident about acing them.

media_camera The chemical sisters... Year 10 students Leonie Higgins and Hannah French at the Curious Minds STEM mentoring program in Canberra, encouraging study of science, technology, engineering and maths subjects. (Pic: News Corp)

Sue Wilson, who lectures in science and maths education at Australian Catholic University, says study after study reinforces the nonsense that girls can’t do maths.

“Employers also show bias against hiring women for mathematical tasks,” says Ms Wilson, adding that in countries with “more gender-equal cultures” such as Norway and Sweden, the gender gap has disappeared, indicating that biases can be changed.

Queensland’s best performing girls’ school is St Aidan’s Anglican, with 46 per cent of eligible students receiving a 1-5.

Principal Karen Spiller says schools must “overcorrect” harmful stereotypes.

“Clearly, girls in many environments aren’t encouraged to take up perceived harder subjects in science and maths, including by some parents, in particular mothers who say they weren’t good at maths or science at school.

“Good schools, single sex or co-ed, really encourage girls to take these subjects, and normalise their participation. When a child says she is studying maths, I say, ‘fantastic, maths is so important!’, rather than ‘good luck with that’.”

Ms Spiller says around the age of 12, girls can “lose their voice”.

“Many stop putting their hand up in class, they don’t want to be seen as silly if they do not know the answer, or if there are boys in the class, they don’t want to show off that they’re smart if they do know the answer.

“Good schools will normalise that is OK to like school and be involved, and counteract stereotypes in the broader world that say it is not cool for girls to be smart.”

Education is more than an OP score, but as the Federal Government commits more than $64 million under the National Innovation and Science Agenda to increase participation in STEM subjects (typically weighted higher in determining OP scores), it is imperative that all schools better support girls in their learning

Tackling implicit bias is the first step to ensuring equitable outcomes.

Kylie Lang is an associate editor at The Courier-Mail