The A-level results came out on Thursday and, as a consequence, anyone with A-level statistics will be fine understanding the vast output of ‘data’ available in the press. If you got history/French/economics; don’t bother looking. You won’t understand.

But two ‘trends’ simply have to be mentioned and explained and understood.

Boys averaged higher in A-level grades achieved than girls. Why? Probably because they’re more clever. I mean; why else? I haven’t yet seen the data on trans kids but that would be interesting. Would trans boys perform better than trans girls? Is the aspirational gender more significant than a pair of testicles in the exam outcome?

Secondly is the ‘regional difference’. The fact that there is a massive and increasing difference in top grade achievement between the South East and the ‘north’. This will cause great upset, anxiety and probably political changes from the Prime Minister, the consummate ‘northerner’. And yet he will now have to face another undeniable fact. That ‘the south east’ is about 10% more clever than ‘the north’. It’s there, in black’n’white, on the tables. London had about 33% of kids getting an A grade. The north-east had 23%. The northwest (Burnham’s obsession) only did about 1% better.

Northerners are thicker than southerners. It is now a proven fact.

Ok, there are ‘over-riding effects’ which much be taken into consideration. For most northerners, English is not their first language. Well, it sounds like that when you hear them speak. And that must disadvantage the children during exams. Others will quote socio-economic variations between the regions. The south-east is ‘richer’. And for some reason, ‘poor people’ don’t use books, preferring to sit their children in front of the tv for 7 hours, eating crisps. No children complain about this. Yet books are available, free, in any local library. Whereas Netflix costs 8 quid a month, Disney £7.50, Sky… lots.

This would cause some to try to improve the educational standards in the North. Andy Burnham, raised on the ‘politics of envy’ and ‘lowest common denominatorism’ of long-term Labour educational policy, will probably work out ways to make Southern kids more stupid.

Basically, Southerners are massively aspirational for their children. To the point where in some cases the parents are so obsessed that they don’t allow their kids any ‘down time’ at all. But somewhere is a happy medium, where kids are encouraged and assisted with their schoolwork at home and maybe read together, and even make it all fun.

But essentially; northerners don’t just sound ‘a bit divvy’, they are so. It’s in the numbers. Results don’t lie.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx