GIRLS have come out on top because our exams have been systematically feminised, says Dr Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute. “If we select the methodical over the risk-takers, will Britain still be capable of meeting the challenges the world throws its way?” he worries... “Or will it just produce civil servants?” Call me old-fashioned, though, but my politics teacher taught me that Britain was built on a sturdy foundaion of pen-pushing, ledger-hugging, detail-obsessed civil servants, who kept brilliant yet disorganised minds on track. So a few thousand extra civil servants seem more than a fair exchange for girls finally getting fair treatment at school.

In recent years, it has been the exam system that systematically discriminated against them but we shouldn’t forget how recently it was that gels weren’t deemed worthy of educating .

Topaz Amoore