A-level results show deepening inequality despite vows to tackle attainment gaps

With results for Level 3 qualifications released today, a Sky News Data & Forensics unit analysis shows growing regional attainment gaps in A-levels that experts say ultimately tie to deprivation.

Across the country, the proportion of students receiving top grades, counted as A or A*, grew to 28.3%, the highest since 2002 excluding pandemic years.

Nonetheless, some regions failed to keep pace with the rest of the country. The North East of England, which ranked last in this year’s results, saw the proportion of its students achieving top grades drop by a percentage point.

Schools North East, which represents over 1,150 schools, said these results show “the North East’s educational challenge is not about standards in our schools, but about structural inequalities that hold back students’ opportunities”.

Meanwhile, London remained the top-ranked region this year. The proportion of its students with top grades increased by 0.7 percentage points.

Chris Paterson, co-chief executive of the educational charity Education Endowment Foundation, said: “The gap in outcomes between regions driven by relative levels of affluence and deprivation remains striking and, looks from the data today, to actually have widened.”

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson earlier this week decried the “scandal” of relatively poor achievement rates recorded among white working class children and announced a government white paper this autumn to address the issue.

“Put simply, these children have been betrayed,” said Ms Phillipson.

Top grades more likely at private schools

Significant gaps also exist between students at state-funded versus fee-paying schools.

Nearly half of A-level students at private schools earned top grades compared with 25.4% of students at state-funded schools.

Mr Paterson explained that generally more affluent students at private schools can mean access to enhanced opportunities such as tutoring. Private schools also tend to have better teacher retention and recruitment rates than their state-funded counterparts.

Within-region breakdown shows stark inequalities

While high-level data has shown growing achievement gaps between regions of England, a breakdown by county reveals even further disparities.

Among all English counties, Rutland recorded the highest percentage, or 40%, of students receiving A or A*.

This is despite its region, the East Midlands, overall ranking second lowest for proportion of students achieving top grades.

The Isle of Wight recorded the lowest percentage of high achievers at 15.8%. Yet, its region, the South East, was overall second-best for top grades, with 31.2% of its students receiving A or A* – nearly twice as much.

These differences are not “about ability between different children in those different regions”, Mr Paterson said. “It’s about relative access to opportunity more fundamentally than anything else.”

University acceptances reach record high

Despite these challenges, there is still much to celebrate on Results Day, with a record number of undergraduate acceptances issued this year.

As well, the number of 18-year-olds accepted from the most deprived areas in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland increased this year by 6.4%, according to UCAS.

A-level grades are just one factor among many considered by universities, explained Joanna Burton, head of policy, higher education, for the Russell Group.

“The people that work in admissions teams are very experienced in taking into consideration lots of different factors about an applicant. So, yes, of course their grades are really important,” said Ms Burton. “But there’s all these other factors which might have had an impact on that student reaching their potential.”

That being said, “it would be very important to reiterate that a university would never accept a student on if they didn’t believe them to be fully capable of making the most of the course and to succeed on the course”, added Ms Burton.

Subject choice shows gender differences

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects are growing in popularity among A-level students.

For many years running, mathematics remained the most popular subject, with nearly a third of students sitting its exam.

Three other STEM subjects and history rounded out the top five.

Since 2019, history has fallen in popularity by 18% while subjects like business studies and economics have surged.

In overall results, boys were more likely than girls to receive A*s. However, about the same proportion of boys and girls were likely to receive A or A*. And, when looking at the proportion of students receiving grades ranging from B to A*, girls outperformed boys by several percentage points.

Nonetheless, differences by gender emerge when looking at subject choices.

Boys were significantly more likely to choose subjects like computing, physics, accounting, and further mathematics, while girls made up more than 90% of the students taking health and social care (double) and performing/expressive arts.

T-levels growing in popularity but many students drop out

Uptake on T-levels has grown by 61.4% on last year but remains low compared with A-levels. Results for 814,335 A-level students were released on Thursday in contrast with 11,909 T-level students.

T-levels are two-year courses taken post-GCSE that combine in-class learning with hands-on job experience.

They were first introduced in 2020 by former prime minister Boris Johnson and are intended to replace myriad other post-GCSE technical paths such as BTECs with a standardised vocational qualification.

Yet, since their introduction, T-levels have struggled with poor enrolment, high failure rates, and low retention.

The Department for Education’s initial estimate of how many students would be starting T-levels in the 2024-25 school year was 102,500. The actual number of students starting this past year was 25,508.

“People are just not aware of T-levels,” said Robbie Maris, a researcher with the Education Policy Institute, an educational research charity.

More than a quarter of T-level entrants are also quitting their courses before reaching completion.

This poor retention rate can be tied to a mismatch between students’ expectations upon starting their T-levels and their actual experiences, said Mr Maris.

“One of the biggest issues has been in that first year, there was just far too much content. It was way more difficult than students had expected,” he said.

Overall, said Mr Maris, many of the T-levels pathways are still in their “teething” stage.

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Despite these challenges, he pointed to several successes of the programme so far.

Namely, students who successfully complete their T-levels are significantly more likely to progress on to higher technical study and advanced apprenticeships than students on all other academic or vocational paths, according Education Policy Institute research released on Thursday.

“Students who do successfully stay on a T-level and complete do go on to achieve good outcomes,” said Mr Maris.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.