Research at Bristol University in 2014 revealed the negative effect that watching international football on TV can have on GCSE performance. When there's a summer world cup or european championships, on average students do about half a grade worse in one GCSE than expected. Inevitably, boys from poor backgrounds do worst of all.
Given that the Welsh team has performed wonderfully well during the European Championships this year, which fell in the middle of the GCSE season, there are reasons to think that a lot of youngsters in the Principality will have invested time and emotion in following its exploits – rather than doing that extra revision.
This will be great news for whoever the Welsh education minister is these days as the'll be able to add this to the long list of reasons why the Welsh GCSE results were poor again this year. What a pity it wasn't a PISA year.
Meanwhile, I imagine that results in England will not have been affected all that much as surely no one was watching as the direst team in the world meandered its pathetic way through the championships.
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