Today sees the release of national Key Stage 4 (GCSE and equivalent) data for 2023.
This provides further information, including school-level data, that goes beyond the headlines published by JCQ in the summer.
That was accompanied by press coverage of a widening gap between schools in the North and those in the South (see this for example).
Our view is that while this is not entirely groundless, it diverts attention away from much more fundamental inequalities: specifically, local variations in school performance and the again-rising inequality in GCSE outcomes between poor and non-poor pupils. We set out the details of this below, noting that inequalities in GCSE outcomes contribute substantially to inequalities in life chances, and so the source of those differences is a key policy issue.
This is far from the first time that schools in the North have been criticised. This in the Times in 2020, quoted Sir Michael Wilshaw as saying that most of the lowest-performing Local Authorities (LAs) were in the north (see the FFT response here).
