This doesn't match with my experience in a Scottish state school, albeit way back in 1997-2003. In the top class in maths we always had more girls than boys thr

This doesn't match with my experience in a Scottish state school, albeit way back in 1997-2003. In the top class in maths we always had more girls than boys throughout my time there. If anything boys were often treated as a nuisance for the first four years of secondary school - many leave aged 16 to work in farming or in oil - and you're only taken seriously if you stick around for the final two years. Coming through an isolated, rural school like this then hitting the real world where the roles are reversed (women are more frequently discriminated against, paid worse) - was a bit of a shock. Note that I didn't suffer at school or anything, it was just sort of accepted that if you were a boy and you wanted to achieve academically you were going against the grain and you were largely on your own. It is definitely true that as a country the self-deprecating "haha I'm rubbish at maths" attitude is pretty common, I don't whether that is indicative of actual ability or if it's just something people say.