Plans for greater devolution and new technical pathways must seek to address regional disparities in post-16 attainment, school leaders have said, as London’s A-level results continue to soar ahead of other areas. This year’s A-level results show the gap in the proportion of A* and A grades between the highest and lowest performing regions has increased to 9.6 percentage points. The gap was 7.3 percentage points before the pandemic in 2019. Andy Burnham’s new government is planning greater devolution of public services and to introduce new technical pathways in schools. Today’s results show an increased appetite for technical routes, with T-level entries rising by 65 per cent compared with last year, with 19,665 entries. Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said it was “crucial” that government proposals for devolution and technical pathways “serve to close rather than exacerbate attainment gaps between different parts of the country”. “Schools’ and colleges’ ability to offer a range of opportunities that cater for young people’s needs and interests should not be constrained by a lack of resources or where they are based.” He called for the government to work with Ofqual to ensure regional analysis includes VTQs and that separate breakdowns are published, to make sure these routes have “true parity”. “While that may not be easy, it would allow a better understanding of entrenched regional differences, and should be explored as a priority.” This year Ofqual has published the breakdown of A-level results by council area for the first time. Highest attainment The City of London technically has the top A-level results of any local authority area, with 65.4 per cent of entries at A and above, and 30.5 per cent at A*. However, the area is small and has no state secondary schools, so its results reflect only the performance of private school pupils. Data published by Ofqual today shows private school pupils nationally continue to far outperform their state sector counterparts. The next highest results were in London boroughs Richmond (48.7 per cent) and Kingston-upon-Thames (45.3 per cent). London boroughs formed nine of the top 10 council areas with the highest proportion of A and A* entries. Trafford in Greater Manchester also made it on the list. However, the picture was markedly different in other London boroughs. Tower Hamlets, the lowest in the region, had just 17.1 per cent of entries at A or above. This makes an overall gap of 48.3 percentage points between the highest and lowest-attaining councils in the capital. There are also gaps between different council areas within other regions, although not as dramatic as in London. In the south east for example, while 41.9 per cent of entries in Reading achieved As and above, just 17.8 per cent in Milton Keynes did the same. ‘Don’t be be deterministic’ In an interview with Schools Week, Ofqual’s chief regulator Ian Bauckham acknowledged that social background was an “important driver”, but that it was “important not to be deterministic”. “While the regional data is important, because it gives a high-level snapshot of achievements in a large region, there’s a lot of granularity that sits below that. “When you look around the London boroughs, you will absolutely see that the greater level of disadvantage tends to correlate with lower performance, but there are also great counter examples. “There are schools serving disadvantaged areas where great leadership and great teaching has been able to turn around outcomes.” He said attainment gaps “open up early in students’ lives”, and that it was important to “remain focused on closing those quality gaps as early as possible”. When asked about the rise in entries of subjects such as economics and politics, Bauckham said they “clearly have a vocational flavour to them … I think students are thinking about future job prospects”. Whiteman also said regional attainment issues could be “baked in” from a young age, and that the government should continue its focus on early years and addressing the root causes of poverty. ‘Structural divide’ The proportion of top grades in Durham stood at 28.5 per cent, despite the wider north east region being one of the lowest attaining in England. The proportion of A and A* grades in the north east actually increased, but not enough to keep up with increases in other regions. Chris Zarraga, the director of Schools North East, said: “There is not a north-south divide in the quality of schools or in the potential and ambition of young people. “There is a structural divide in the circumstances and opportunities surrounding them.” Nick Harrison, the chief executive of the Sutton Trust, said there was an “increasingly stark regional divide, as London continues to pull further ahead of the rest of England”. “A young person’s chances shouldn’t depend so heavily on where they go to school. These results underline the need for concerted action to tackle the attainment gap and regional differences across England.”