As over one million students receive their GCSE results, Sky News has found gender and factors linked to deprivation remain troubling predictors of students’ performance.

Overall GCSE grades are relatively consistent with last year’s results, indicating stability has returned following the end of pandemic grading.

The compulsory courses, Level 2 English and Mathematics, continue to be a hurdle for many GCSE students – with Thursday’s results showing the highest failure rates for the two subjects in a decade.

Yet, while overall grades are stable, so too are key attainment gaps that experts say point to deprivation.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson denounced attainment gaps for white working-class children in an article for The Telegraph.

“It’s appalling, and I won’t stand by and watch those numbers continue to grow,” Ms Phillipson wrote. “It’s not just the life chances of those children that are being damaged – it’s also the health of our society as a whole.”

While the data does not share deprivation status or ethnicity of students, other strongly correlated factors such as English region and school type show stark inequalities.

Some 48.1% of GCSE exams sat at fee-paying schools in England received grades of 7 or above, compared with 18.2% at non-selective state schools.

Fiona Spellman, CEO of education charity SHINE, said, “The primary difference that drives the attainment gap between those who attend independent schools and those who don’t really comes from the circumstances in those children’s lives.”

Regional inequalities across England also remain significant. In London, 28.4% of GCSE exams were awarded a grade 7 or higher compared with just 17.8% of exams in the North East of England.

But even students in London were outperformed by Northern Ireland, where 31.6% of GCSE students received a 7 or above.

“Deprivation is a major driver of the gap we see between the different regions and in terms of the attainment children achieve in all phases of education,” said Ms Spellman.

This year’s cohort had both a disrupted primary and secondary school experience due to the pandemic – a factor that may be influencing some of these inequality gaps.

“We know that the pandemic affected all children, but we know that it didn’t affect all children equally,” added Ms Spellman. “The legacy of COVID is still very much still alive today and how that had a disproportionate effect on the children who most need support is still working its way through.”

Gender gap stubbornly persistent

One of the clearest divides in the results – and not mentioned by the education secretary – is gaps based on gender.

Girls continue to receive a greater proportion of the top grades compared with boys. Among students receiving a 7/A or above, 55.8% were girls while 44.2% were boys.

In England, the gap is wider when looking just at 16-year-old students taking 7 or more GCSEs. 60.7% of those in this cohort receiving top grades were girls while 39.3% were boys.

But, Jill Duffy, the chair of one of the main qualifications body, the OCR, pointed out the overall gender gap this year is the narrowest since 2000.

However, Claire Thomson and Cath Jadhav, both board members of the Joint Council for Qualifications alongside Ms Duffy, cautioned that the decrease in the gender gap was too small to confirm any concrete trend.

“The change is relatively small, at fractions of percentage points, so there will be lots of individual factors which affect that,” said Ms Jadhav.

Certain subjects showed large gender imbalances between boys and girls.

Girls were the most overrepresented in home economics, followed by performing/expressive arts, health & social care, hospitality, and social science subjects.

In contrast, boys were disproportionately more likely to take other technology, construction, engineering, computing, and economics.

Working-class boys facing hurdles

So, is Ms Phillipson right to highlight white working-class children as falling behind? And should we be more concerned about white working-class boys in particular?

While the data does not include sufficient detail on how these inequalities stack on each other, data published by the Department for Education (DfE) based on last year’s results suggest white working-class boys are among the most disadvantaged in education.

Among all children eligible for free school meals, White British boys were much less likely to receive a grade of 4 – a pass – or above on their GCSEs.

Black Caribbean and mixed white/black Caribbean boys on free school meals had similarly poor pass rates.

“It’s not all boys. And it’s not all white working-class boys,” said David Spendlove, professor at the University of Manchester’s Institute for Education. But, “boys top all of those key indicators: likely to be diagnosed with special needs, likely to be excluded from school.”

“The system is stacked against them and at every single hurdle they are going to face challenges which mount increasingly over time,” said Prof Spendlove.

Beyond A-levels

What’s next for students receiving results on Thursday?

According to DfE’s 2024 numbers, just over 40% of 16-year-olds started an A-level course the following year.

More than 20% started other Level 3 qualifications, such as T-levels or BTECs. Around 3.5% started apprenticeships.

However, 6.2% were classified as not in education, employment, or training (“NEET”).

Simon Ashworth, deputy CEO and head of policy for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said, “The number of young people who are not in education, employment or training has got worse, not better.”

“We’re nearly to a million young people who are NEET,” he said. “That is a worry.”

Boys between the ages of 16 and 18 are more likely than their female counterparts to have NEET status, DfE data reveals.

Furthermore, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds “tend to be the young people who will be closest to the job market or the risk of becoming NEET once they leave education,” shared Mr Ashworth.

Mr Ashworth also added that some young people who pursue apprenticeships fail to complete them because they struggle to pass mandatory Level 2 Mathematics.

Students who receive lower-than-desired results on Thursday, however, should stay optimistic that many doors remain open to them.

This year saw a 12.1% rise in students 17 or older resitting exams this year.

SHINE’s Dr Helen Rafferty said that the resit rate is likely due to the pandemic as “many students have come to the end of their secondary school journey having had the most chaotic and disrupted educational journey that you can imagine.”

Nonetheless, Ms Rafferty said, “I do think it’s encouraging that so many students are choosing to move on to an educational pathway which still provides them with that opportunity to get their English and maths results.”

A Northampton childminder who was jailed for inciting racial hatred after the Southport murders has been released from prison.

Lucy Connolly, the wife of Conservative councillor Raymond Connolly, was handed a 31-month sentence in October last year after she admitted publishing and distributing “threatening or abusive” written material on the X social media site.

In an apparent reference to asylum seekers staying in UK hotels, Connolly posted on the day of the murder of three girls in Southport on 29 July last year: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”

The mother-of-three, who was working as a childminder at the time, had shared the post after false rumours circulated online that the Southport murderer was an asylum seeker. He was later named as UK-born teenager Axel Rudakubana.

Connolly’s post was viewed 310,000 times in three-and-a-half hours before she deleted it.

Her release means she has served nine months of a 31-month sentence.

Her sentence which was handed down at Birmingham Crown Court has been criticised as being too harsh and some argued she should not have been jailed as she was exercising freedom of speech.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch challenged Lucy Connolly’s charges, saying that “protecting people from words should not be given greater weight in law than public safety”.

“If the law does this, then the law itself is broken – and it’s time Parliament looked again at the Public Order Act,” she said in a post on X on Thursday.

The Tory leader said: “Lucy Connolly finally returns home to her family today. At last.

“Her punishment was harsher than the sentences handed down for bricks thrown at police or actual rioting.

“At that time, after Southport, Keir Starmer branded all protesters ‘far-right’ and called for ‘fast-track prosecutions’.

“Days later, Lucy was charged with stirring up racial hatred – an offence that doesn’t even require intent to incite violence. Why exactly did the Attorney General think that was in the public interest?”

Rupert Lowe, who was an MP for Reform at the time, described her as a “political prisoner” in a Facebook post and said “jailing a young mother over a social media post is not fair play”.

However, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer defended the sentencing earlier this year, addressing Connolly’s case in May after her Court of Appeal application against her jail term was dismissed.

Asked during Prime Minister’s Questions whether her imprisonment was an “efficient or fair use” of prison, Sir Keir said: “Sentencing is a matter for our courts, and I celebrate the fact that we have independent courts in this country.

“I am strongly in favour of free speech, we’ve had free speech in this country for a very long time and we protect it fiercely.

“But I am equally against incitement to violence against other people. I will always support the action taken by our police and courts to keep our streets and people safe.”

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Lord Young of Acton, founder and director of the Free Speech Union, said: “The fact that Lucy Connolly has spent more than a year in prison for a single tweet that she quickly deleted and apologised for is a national scandal, particularly when Labour MPs, councillors and anti-racism campaigners who’ve said and done much worse have avoided jail.

“The same latitude they enjoyed should have been granted to Lucy.”

London Underground workers will stage a series of strikes for seven days next month in a dispute over pay and conditions.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) said its Tube members will take industrial action at different times from 5 September.

The union claimed management had refused to engage seriously with its demands on pay, fatigue management, shift patterns and a reduction in the working week.

In a separate dispute over pay and conditions, RMT members on London’s Docklands Light Railway will also be striking in the week beginning 7 September.

RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey said: “Our members are doing a fantastic job to keep our capital moving and work strenuous shift patterns to make sure Londoners get to their destinations around the clock.

“They are not after a King’s ransom, but fatigue and extreme shift rotations are serious issues impacting on our members’ health and wellbeing – all of which have not been adequately addressed for years by LU management.

“Coupled with the fact there are outstanding issues around staff travel arrangements, an atmosphere of distrust has been created, where our members feel like no-one is listening to them.

“RMT will continue to engage LU management with a view to seeking a revised offer in order to reach a negotiated settlement.”

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A Transport for London spokesperson said: “We regularly meet with our trade unions to discuss any concerns that they may have, and we recently met with the RMT to discuss some specific points.

“We are committed to ensuring our colleagues are treated fairly and, as well as offering a 3.4% pay increase in our ongoing pay discussions, we have made progress on a number of commitments we have made previously.

“We welcome further engagement with our unions about fatigue and rostering across London Underground, but a reduction in the contractual 35-hour working week is neither practical nor affordable.

“Given the improvements we have recently put in place in response to concerns raised by our unions, we urge the RMT to put our fair, affordable pay offer to their members and to continue to engage with us rather than threaten strike action, which will only disrupt Londoners.”