Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Heel, I'm joined by Isabel Harbin from Spectator and Sir Nick Gibb, the former Education Minister.

Now, today is GCSE Results Day. It's a bit of a mixed picture from the news stories thus far.

Top grades have risen, but more have failing maths than English. The trend of higher top grades since the pandemic has continued,

while the gap between boys and girls is narrowed.

Isabel, what are the sort of lines picking out from this today?

A bit of a mixed picture, but obviously a time when education as a debate is very much at the forefront in Westminster.

Yeah, interesting set of results, I think,

particularly the pass rate for English and maths hitting a record low,

and also the point made by Bridget Philipson about children leaving school without workable English and math skills is holding the country back,

which suggests that there's going to be a push from the government on

English and maths skills, because as a minister, you would not highlight this problem unless

you plan to spend quite a lot of time talking about it. I think also, and not surprisingly,

we still have a real attainment problem amongst white working class children.

Interestingly, though, overall, the gap between boys and girls is at its narrowest.

We saw that as well, I think, in A levels, when the results came out last week.

And for a long time, and I remember, gosh, probably about 10

years ago now, writing a piece in The Spectator about how girls were just ahead of boys on

everything. And the point at which men overtook women was when women gave birth and was sort of removed

from the workplace for a few weeks or months and men were able to surge ahead.

That's not happening anymore or certainly that is happening less

and boys are catching up with girls,

which I think is really interesting in terms of the way in which the classroom is changing,

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