The spectator combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority.

Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online

and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher absolutely free.

Go to spectator.co.uk slash summer.

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots,

the spectator's daily politics podcast.

I'm Cindy Yu and I'm joined by Isabel Hardman and a former Chief Executive of the UK's

Mary Kermit Cook. So, Mary, it's another result state today, but unlike the last few years

that we can remember, it's not so turbulent this year because the pandemic does seem to be over.

Tell us about what we're seeing in the results today.

Yeah, sure. I mean, everything's down a bit on last year, as we've seen in the news, the

A-level results are down a bit. Actually, there are slightly fewer applicants, both school

leaveers and older applicants. We've got just under 80% accepted to their first choice so far

versus just 81% last year, but all of this is actually a bit better than 2019, including the A-level

results. And slightly fewer people have had to go into clearing and there are, I think, something

like 28,000 courses in clearing, but of course, what really matters is not how many courses,

but how many places there are on those courses, and that's critical, mostly at the higher tariff

unies, where I think they're probably quite a small number of places on many courses.

I'm sure it seems really tough for those individuals who didn't get the results that they

wanted today, but I think overall it's a good thing, because at the moment we've got, let's see,

we've got two cohorts in the population with no exams, so that's probably about 600,000 students

and another 300,000 or so, who had the sort of halfway house last year. And so, as each year

...