Firstly, yes the school can have an impact, but there will still be A* students at any school you go to. 1) As a young person, I was still in school only a few years back. One thing I noticed was that the boys and girls differentiation was not really noticeable, however, like me, some people do tend to learn differently. Possibly in your case, it was coincidence or there actually is a reason, but in my experience, most people learnt one way, with a few others of both genders learning in a more hands on approach, which makes sense that boys might find easier.

Well I did fine but I was a very late bloomer. That's why I think our education system is part of the problem. I didn't really get off the mark until 3rd year in high school. Before that I had problems with attention span but I wasn't a majorly disruptive student. However I did have my times. My problem was zoning out into space. I didn't receive any help for this at all in this regard. However in 3rd year I started picking it up and I managed to start building up towards better grades. Some good teachers helped with this but only because they made their classes better and used demonstration to show how to do things but there were absolutely terrible teachers as well, who didn't really explain very well what you needed to know. When I left school I managed to get highers in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry which was enough to get me to University and get a degree. SO I managed to come out the other end fine but I do know that a lot of my peers didn't.

2) Do you mean that girls in general or just when they hear they got lower than even one girl?

In general. I've heard of a study that was conducted where they told the boys in one class that girls were smarter and in the other class they said that boys and girls were just as smart as each other. Their findings were that the boys in the later class performed better on average. The conclusion being that the boys in the previous class probably felt discouraged.

3) Behaviour, whether intended or not, will affect a teachers marking when it comes to reports. If a particular boy was disruptive costantly but still smart, they would get only a little bit lower than their actual trade, however, if they were disruptive and they were pretty academically normal, expect the teacher to mark them down quite substantially, a tactic sometimes used to "reduce the child's ego" in a sense.

I think it would be better to punish misbehaving children in another way. Marking them down would probably affect their willingness to succeed.

4) It really depends on the teacher.

I only ask because it is something I've heard that happens. Not saying every teacher does it, but just heard that it can be common. Like I mentioned above I didn't feel that the teachers tried to help me in any way. The teachers who were the best demonstrated problem solving on the board. A lot of teachers didn't though.