As usual, headline reactions to the latest A-Level results, published last week, focussed on how bad it is that London schools did best. Almost 33 per cent of A-level entries were awarded A* or A grades, extending their lead over the rest of England. Other areas saw improvements too, but all the talk, yet again, was of “north-south divide” and “regional imbalance” and how such evils can be purged.
As ever, it isn’t quite that simple. For one thing, there were large variations across the expanse of Greater London. In some boroughs, the overall percentage of A*s or As was pushing 50 per cent, with Richmond at the top, followed by Kingston and Sutton. But the rates in Islington, Tower Hamlets, Barking & Dagenham and Havering were below 20 per cent.
Those low-scoring boroughs did little better than some council areas in the North East and Yorkshire & The Humber regions, and worse than the average for the North West and East Midlands regions. As ever, broad geographical framings fuel grievances while obscuring realities.
Why do London’s schools, as a whole, do so well? The stock claim that it’s all down to unfair funding has again been made but (also again) without acknowledging that spending per pupil in London is higher than elsewhere because costs are higher too. Years of studies have identified real reasons, which range from improvements in primary schools way back in the 1990s to the desire of immigrants’ kids to do well.
This success story follows decades of far too many London schools being in a sorry state. And as the latest A-Level results confirm, it isn’t universal. For example, the “London effect” manifested in children from economically poor backgrounds doing better than counterparts elsewhere is real. But a recent Sutton Trust report has shown that it stronger for some groups of London children than for others and not evenly spread.
There is an additional, larger context in which London children’s exams results, including those for GCSEs due later this week, should be assessed. It is the capital’s high and rising rate of youth unemployment.
Trust for London has shown how sharply this has gone up among 16-to-24 year olds, with those in Bexley, Havering, Barking & Dagenham and Tower Hamlets hit worst, along with Ealing, which has seen a staggering 40 per cent increase in the number receiving unemployment benefit since 2023.
Step back further and reflect that London employment is set to be hit hardest by AI, with estimates of between 20 and 75 per cent of jobs at some sort of risk from it. The young are among those most exposed, says City Hall in a report citing evidence that many students and apprentices don’t feel adequately prepared for using AI. It also notes that the young are active users of technology and could benefit greatly from the right AI training and experience.
London’s population is getting older and life for many of its young people, however well-qualified, is getting harder, with growing numbers expecting to leave the city in the next few years, in part because it’s getting harder to get on. The city has risen to education challenges before. It now needs to do so again.
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