News

North East students succeed as persistent top-grade gap highlights England’s structural divide

Schools North East congratulates all students across the region receiving their GCSE and Level 2 results today, alongside the teachers, school staff and families who have supported them.

Headline GCSE results

• 17.7% of GCSE entries in the North East achieved grades 7–9 in 2026. While this is a slight decline on 2025, it is above the pre-pandemic rate (16.4%).
• The gap between the North East and London at grades 7–9 is now 10.9 percentage points, up from 10.6 points in 2025 and above the 9.3 percentage points gap recorded in 2019.
• While year-to-year movements have been relatively small, the top-grade gap has remained persistently high since the pandemic.
• 65.2% of North East GCSE entries achieved a grade 4 or above.
• At grade 4 and above, the North East–London gap has narrowed compared with 2025 to 6.5 percentage points and is now broadly back to its pre-pandemic 2019 level of 6.8 points.

The results show important progress at grade 4 and above. The narrowing of this gap back towards its pre-pandemic position should be recognised, alongside the significant work schools have undertaken to support pupils following the disruption of recent years.

However, the position at the top grades tells a different story. While the gap has not changed dramatically from one year to the next, it remains persistently wider than before the pandemic.

This is significant in that it suggests that although some of the wider disruption to attainment is being recovered, substantial regional differences remain in the proportion of young people reaching the very highest levels of attainment.

The figures underline the need to look beyond simplistic regional comparisons of school performance. Today’s results should not be seen as a league table of school quality, nor as a North-South divide, but as another indication of the structural divide in the circumstances, resources and opportunities surrounding children and young people in different parts of England. 

A cohort shaped by the pandemic

Students receiving their GCSE results today experienced some of their most important years of education during the pandemic.

For many, disruption came during the final years of primary school and around the transition into secondary education, a critical period for developing confidence, independence and the foundations for later learning.

The consequences of that disruption have not been evenly distributed. The pandemic had its greatest impact on disadvantaged children and communities, and its effects have interacted with longer-standing inequalities that existed well before 2020. The North East has the highest rates of long-term disadvantage, with a third of students in our region being eligible for Free School Meals. These differences in rates of disadvantage are reflected in the more significant impact of the pandemic on children and young people in our region.

North East schools have worked intensively to support pupils through that disruption. The return of the grade 4 and above regional gap to around its pre-pandemic level is therefore significant.

But recovery cannot simply mean returning to inequalities that already existed in 2019. At the highest grades, the regional gap is now greater than it was before the pandemic. Schools North East believes that should prompt policymakers to ask why some parts of the country continue to pull further ahead.

A structural divide, not a divide in standards

The circumstances facing schools and young people in different parts of England are not the same.

The North East has some of the highest levels of long-term disadvantage and SEND in the country, alongside the highest rates of absence. Access to services such as educational psychologists and speech and language therapy varies significantly between different local authorities. Schools are working within communities where families continue to experience economic pressures and where specialist SEND, mental health, social care and early intervention services are under considerable strain.

There are also significant differences in the opportunities available outside school. Previous analysis has highlighted major regional disparities in access to private tutoring. The Sutton Trust has measured private tutoring rates in the North East at 12% against 27% in England and 45% in London. The National Tutoring Programme, which was intended to reach disadvantaged pupils and to be geographically levelling, struggled throughout to provide tutors to the North East region, and ended in 2024. 

Rural and coastal communities can face particular challenges around transport, access to services and post-16 opportunities. A recent National Audit Office report on school transport highlighted significant geographical variation in spending on home to school transport, with rural and county authorities having higher rates of spending on mainstream transport.

Different regions have also experienced very different histories of investment. London benefited from massive, sustained interventions including the London Challenge and continues to operate within a very different economic, institutional and educational landscape.

None of this diminishes the success of London schools or pupils. But it does mean that regional examination results cannot reasonably be treated as comparisons between identical education systems.

The same trends were evident in last week’s A Level results. North East A Level outcomes remained broadly around their pre-pandemic level, yet the gap with London at the highest grades had grown significantly since 2019.

The GCSE results now reinforce that picture. At grade 4 and above there are encouraging signs that the pandemic-era regional gap has receded. At grades 7–9, however, a larger pre-existing divide has persisted.

This is not evidence of a North-South divide in the quality of schools or the ambition of young people. It is evidence of a structural divide in the conditions and opportunities surrounding them.

A map of the structural divide

Chris Zarraga, Director of Schools North East, said:

“First and above everything else, congratulations to every young person receiving their results today, and to the teachers, staff and families who have supported them. This cohort has experienced extraordinary disruption during their education and they should be enormously proud of what they have achieved.

“There is some genuinely encouraging news in today’s results. At grade 4 and above, the gap between the North East and London has narrowed and is back to around where it was before the pandemic. That reflects an enormous amount of work by schools across our region to support young people and rebuild learning after Covid.

“But the picture at the highest grades remains concerning. The gap at grades 7 to 9 has increased again this year and remains wider than it was in 2019. The movement each year might look relatively small, but the important point is its persistence. Year after year, this divide remains; and is then reflected in student destinations, employment rates, and HE progression rates.

“We have to understand what these figures are telling us. There is not a North-South divide in the quality of schools, nor in the talent, potential or aspirations of young people. There is a structural divide in the circumstances and opportunities surrounding them. The regional results table is a map of that divide, not a map of school quality.

“Schools in the North East are working incredibly hard to overcome those circumstances. But schools cannot independently fix poverty, stretched public services, shortages in SEND support, transport barriers, unequal access to enrichment or very different local economic opportunities.

“These inequalities are neither inevitable nor acceptable. The government needs to treat them as a system challenge and address the conditions around schools as well as what happens inside them. Results day should reflect young people’s potential and hard work, not the structural advantages or disadvantages of their postcode.”

A call for long-term change

Schools North East is calling on the government to create a long-term strategic plan for North East education, to specifically address the structural divide, including differences in access to services around schools, school transport, and labour markets. We welcomed the Department for Education’s announcement of Mission North East, and this must provide sustained investment to our region to address the barriers beyond the school gates that contribute to poorer outcomes and opportunities for children and young people. Short-term and piecemeal interventions must be replaced with sustained and targeted reform.

1. Put regional context at the heart of education policy. National policy must recognise that schools operate within very different social, economic and public-service environments. Greater policy devolution should enable the Department for Education, schools, local authorities and combined authorities to work together to develop responses that reflect the circumstances and needs of individual places.
2. Invest in early years provision to close gaps before they widen. Educational inequalities begin long before GCSEs. Sustained investment in early years, family support and school readiness is essential if the government is serious about preventing disadvantage becoming entrenched throughout a child’s education.
3. Provide long-term, fair funding that reflects regional need. Funding must recognise not only the number of disadvantaged pupils, but the depth and persistence of disadvantage in communities. Areas experiencing long-term deprivation require sustained investment rather than short-term or competitive funding programmes.
4. Rebuild capacity and strategic infrastructure around schools. This is particularly urgent in areas of long-term disadvantage such as the North East. Schools have increasingly taken on additional responsibilities as capacity elsewhere in the system has reduced. Schools are not an island and cannot be expected to provide the answer to every social challenge. The government must rebuild the services and infrastructure surrounding them, including SEND, mental health, social care, family support, early intervention and transport.
5. Deliver a post-16 system in which every route is valued. Academic, vocational and technical pathways must all be high-quality, properly funded and respected, with clear links to further study, training, apprenticeships and meaningful opportunities within the North East economy.

The North East’s young people have the same potential, talent and aspirations as young people anywhere else in England. National policy must ensure they have the same opportunities to realise them.