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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Cindy U

and I'm joined by Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth. So it's day two of the fallout from the A-level

results and so far we're thinking about

what's going to happen in future years. Something's been mooted today about potentially changing

the grading system of A-levels. James, can you explain what's going on with that?

So there's a big debate about how do you squeeze this grade inflation out of a system?

You know, this year, almost 45% of A-level entry has got

either an A or an A star. That's up from 25% in 2019, the last year when you had normal exams

marked in the normal fashion. And I think this idea of moving to us a nine-to-one system,

I think the appeal of this has not been lost on senior figures at the Department of Education. You couldn't obviously do it in time for next year's exams, which are already going to be adjusted to make them easier for people. For example, the government has already consulted on giving students advanced notice of what topics are likely to come up in which papers. But I think the appeal of this is it would essentially enable from 2023 a reset of the current

system. And it would be, you would be rebasing the grading. And it would be very clear to universities and

employers, whether people had sat these last years of a COVID adjusted exams

or sat the new exam.

And I think the danger is that because of people deferring

university entry and the like,

people compete against people from other years.

So you can't just pull the plaster off

and have one year when you snap back to the old

system. And I think the appeal of this is that if you take, if you were to do this in the fairest way

possible, squeezing it out a little bit every year, that could take up to a decade. If it takes up to a

decade, I think it is almost inevitable

...