London's Students Are Getting the Best Grades in England — and the Gap Is Getting Bigger
England's 2026 A-level results came out on 13 August, and they show more students than ever getting the top grades (A and A*) across the country. But behind that good news is a problem: the gap between London and other parts of England has never been wider.
In London, 32.7% of students got an A or A* in 2026, up 6 percentage points from the year before. In the East Midlands, that number dropped slightly, from 23.8% to 23.1%. The north-east barely moved, going from 22.9% to about 23.1%. The gap in top grades between London and the north-east grew to 9.6 percentage points — the largest since the pandemic. Back in 2019, that gap was only 3.9 points. For A* grades alone, the gap between London and the north-east went from 2 percentage points in 2019 to 5.1 points in 2026. The Guardian
This is not a one-year blip. London and the South East have been the top-performing regions for years, according to the Department for Education's data published in July 2026. London was also the best region at primary school level in 2025, with 70% of pupils meeting the expected standard. Think of it like a relay race: if a region's children start ahead in primary school, that head start carries through to secondary school and then to A-levels, getting bigger along the way. Explore Education Statistics
The knock-on effect on university access is already showing. On results day in 2025, only 24.9% of 18-year-olds from the north-east got into university, compared with 43.4% of 18-year-olds from London. Gov.uk
London's advantage has deep roots. In 2003, Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a programme called the London Challenge, which poured targeted support, leadership training, and collaboration between schools into the capital. Its effects are still visible in today's results, more than twenty years later. The government's current version of this programme is called Rise teams (regional improvement for standards and excellence), which focuses on schools that are struggling the most. A new proposal in the government's schools white paper would go further: it would tie school funding to household income, so that schools in poorer areas get more money per student. The Guardian
Chris Zarraga, who leads Schools North East — a group representing 1,150 schools in the region — has been sounding the alarm about the challenges northern schools face, from difficulty hiring teachers to high levels of poverty in certain areas. Lee Elliot Major, a professor of social mobility at Exeter University, has pointed out that where a child grows up shapes their chances in life, and that this effect passes from one generation to the next. The Guardian
The political stakes have risen. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has made regional inequality a top priority. The big question these results raise is whether the government's new funding plan and Rise teams can turn around a gap that has been widening for seven years. The Guardian
When it comes to different types of schools, making fair comparisons is tricky. The Department for Education says you can't easily compare multi-academy trusts (groups of schools run together by one organisation) with other state schools, because they started from very different places. For example, some academy trusts took over schools that were already doing well, while others took over struggling schools. In the 2024/25 school year, schools that were already strong when they joined a trust scored an average of 35.23 points, while schools that were struggling scored 31.56. A newer type of school called a free school had the highest score at 37.18, while studio schools (29.65) and university technical colleges (25.28) had the lowest. The government only publishes trust-level results for groups with at least three schools that have been part of the trust for three years or more. Explore Education Statistics
The broader picture is that these results are the culmination of a trend that started during the pandemic, when grades were inflated because teachers assessed students rather than using exams. London's schools were in a stronger position to cope with the disruption of 2020–2022. They had more teachers to hire from, more high-performing school groups, and two decades of extra investment behind them. Regions like the north-east and East Midlands went into the pandemic with fewer resources and have not caught up since. The proposed change to funding based on household income would be the most direct attempt yet to send more money to the regions where results have stalled. Whether it takes effect in time to change the 2027 results, or gets slowed down by the usual challenges of putting policy into practice, is the question that will shape what happens next.
