Luke, how significant are these findings? How worried should policymakers be about a widening gap in maths in England?

I think there's lots of ways of looking at this.

So clearly we should be concerned about the size of these gender gaps because we don't want them to be there.

And there's been lots of persistent concerns about girls' performance in STEM subjects, in science, technology, engineering and maths and the lack of representation of girls in those subjects and problems about encouraging boys to read and read for pleasure in particular.

So these concerns are long-standing.

What's interesting, I think, is standing back and looking at the cross-country gender gaps, because it's really tempting to see these gender gaps in a country-specific manner and think they're kind of just driven by gender norms and societal trends that are very hard to change.

But there are huge variations in the gender gaps across countries, and England is different to other countries.

So my question is, given all the research you've done on school performance in England and elsewhere, what do you think are the right messages to take away from England's latest PISA results?

A- are you able to nevertheless give us a kind of broad brush idea of what the pressures are and what's going on?

Absolutely.

Um, so we're seeing rising numbers of pupils with additional learning needs in Wales and in England.

Um, but I think it's im- important to be aware of where this Barnett consequential has come from in Wales, and it's come from the fact that the English system is in such a total mess, um, and has so many more pressures than the system in Wales because of the way the system is organized.

So councils have built up 5 billion pounds worth of deficits over the last five years in England, um, and the UK government's had to bail them out.

That's led to this Barnett consequential of about 300 million pounds.

But as you say, it's a one-off.

Would there be any read across to Wales, do you think, from that?

And is this being driven by the London waiting that teachers in the London area get?

So teachers in London do receive high levels of salary.

So for example, in inner London, the top of the pay scale is around £63,000 as compared with around £51,000 outside London.

So that will be pushing up the median a little bit.

But the differences aren't big enough to be making a huge difference.

An average salary level at £51,000 is about the norm across the country.

If you look at the mode teacher across England, they're probably outside London, they're probably at the top of the upper pay scale.

What about teacher pensions? Are they regarded as being quite enviable or not particularly?