Gap between girls and boys in GCSEs at smallest level since 1989

The gap between boys and girls closed to its lowest rate in 37 years, but it's not just a case of boys improving faster and catching up with girls.

The pass rate among girls was lower this year than in any year since 2008, while boys improved upon last year and recorded their best results since 2015.

The lines have been going in opposite directions since the pandemic.

Jon Andrews, head of analysis at the Education Policy Institute, told Sky News that this could be lasting effects of the pandemic coming through.

This year’s cohort of GCSE pupils would have been in the second half of Year 5 when the first COVID restrictions came into effect, with much of their final year of primary school and first year of secondary school also disrupted.

"When we measured learning loss during the pandemic, the effects tended to be bigger for girls," Mr Andrews explained.

"Mental health, wellbeing, happiness and engagement with school appears to be getting worse across the board, but for young girls in particular," he added.

This is reflected in the number of girls regularly missing school, which has risen significantly since the pandemic.

Prior to 2020, girls and boys used to record absences at roughly the same rates. Now, girls are 10% more likely to miss school, and 20% more likely to be “severely absent” (missing more than half of their school sessions).

While the gap in terms of results has narrowed, there is still a significant gap between the number of boys and girls who pass their GCSEs or get top grades.

This is particularly pronounced when we look across the different UK nations. Girls in Northern Ireland were more than twice as likely to get an A or A* than boys in Wales, for example, albeit with a different exam and education system.

Regional divide: London vs the rest

In England, the gap between London and the rest of the country grew wider.

In London, about 29 out of every 100 GCSEs resulted in a grade of 7 or higher. In the North East, just 18 out of 100 got top grades.

Chris Zarraga, director of Schools North East, told Sky News there are multiple reasons for this, including school funding, access to learning opportunities, and attitudes towards education that have filtered through generations.

The number of pupils per teacher is lower in inner London than any other part of the country.

Mr Zarraga says the difficulty recruiting teachers is particularly acute with subject specialists, for example mathematicians or language experts, with pupils outside of London being more likely to be taught by a generalist.

There are also more specialist schools in London, either academically selective or single gender schools. Mr Zarraga says this sort of education system would be difficult to make viable in places like the North East where population density is lower.

Another thing mentioned by both Mr Zarraga and Mr Andrews, in explaining London's overperformance, is demographics.

White pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to perform worse than Asian pupils from a similar background. As there are more Asian pupils in London than other parts of the country, that helps to raise overall results there.

Mr Zarraga says "because there's a stronger labour market in London, families can better see the value of education, and more clearly map out the route to see how it can take you from one place economically to a different one."

"In the North East you have generations of families with very poor histories of education and how it relates to the labour market. There is a lack of visibility as to how it can get you where you need to be."

He added that it can be difficult for prospective students in the North East to physically get where they need to be to access education opportunities as well, if transport links aren’t as easily available as they are in the capital.

On this point, Mr Zarraga welcomes the way the government and new prime minister Andy Burnham have been talking about devolution, but awaits more detail about the approach.

"In the past it has tended to be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model, usually based on what has worked well in London. If power is devolved, local areas can look at their own local priorities, and how things like local transport and local labour markets relate to one another.

“No real concrete plans have been released yet though, so we don’t know if things will go far enough."

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.

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