And I think it's fair to say we've not done loads in science and yet this improvement appears because that would then suggest you know year nine in 2023 actually there is some kind of trend there but i know the science assessment changed i know you're not a kind of science assessment design person but i wonder whether that had anything to do with it and i know science other countries also did better in science than they did elsewhere and i wonder whether that came into it at all

It's hard to say.

I remember from the TIMSS 23 science results, I'm actually in the back of my memory banks now, right? But there was some strange findings to it as well as, and I think, wasn't it completely clustered amongst boys or completely clustered amongst girls? I can't quite remember which it was, but there were some very striking gender patterns that were going there in the TIMSS 23 results, where I think for one of the genders, and I think it was girls, we saw no improvement.

And for boys, we saw a kind of real massive improvement.

which was really surprising.

I still feel from those two, we don't have enough there yet to have a kind of real confidence that it's a real trend yet, but watch this space over the next couple of years to see what emerges there.

In terms of science generally being better than the other domains, I think there is some interesting stuff going on in terms of Some of the PISA assessment design, it gets on into the nuances about it changing and it changing over time.

Test date changes.

Any idea why?

I mean, there's a lot of potential reasons why this could be the case, including several methodological issues.

So one of the things that happens in Wales when young people take their GCSEs is they often get a choice whether to answer in English or in Welsh, or rather they get to see questions in both languages.

That's not the case in the PISA study, where essentially they have to choose one or the other.

So, you know, that's something that could affect the results, and it is something that's probably a bit unusual to the children.

There's also been potentially long-standing issues with the translation, obviously, of PISA into other languages as well, and Welsh is, uh, one of those.

And because it's a relatively minor language with not that many people obviously internationally speaking Welsh and taking it, it doesn't have quite the same level as in... verification as some of the more major languages out there.

Do we know about that?