The young people who took their GCSEs this summer were in their first year of secondary school when the pandemic hit in 2020. For many, their results last Thursday were cause for celebration and a credit to their resilience during and after what was the most tumultuous time for the English education system in over 70 years. But dig beneath the positive headlines, and it becomes apparent that this set of grades demonstrates the growing socioeconomic attainment gap between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more affluent peers, with pernicious consequences for their lifetime opportunities, and for society more widely.
The regional gap in GCSE results has only got starker: this year, 28.5% of GCSE entries in London were awarded a grade 7, compared with 17.8% in the north-east and 18.3% in the East Midlands and Yorkshire. This is in large part accounted for by the socioeconomic attainment gap. The same can be said for the increasing gap in top GCSE grades between selective and independent schools on the one hand, and non-selective state schools on the other.
