GCSE results day 2022 live: students discover exam grades amid warning of regional attainment gap

Education minister Will Quince has been doing the media rounds this morning, taking the lead from Rishi Sunak and blaming those uppity scientists for all the things that went wrong in the pandemic.

[You can read Sunak’s comments about how it was a mistake to “empower scientists” during the coronavirus pandemic and that his opposition to closing schools was met with silence during one meeting here:]

Asked on ITV’s Good Morning Britain about Tory leadership candidate Rishi Sunak’s claim that it was a mistake to “empower scientists” during the Covid-19 pandemic, Quince said:

So, I think there are a number of things which we did during the pandemic, which was a once-in-100-years event, that we wouldn’t do again.
And, in my view, one of those is closing schools. We wouldn’t be closing schools with the information we now have at the time.
I wasn’t an education minister at the time, I was at the Department for Work and Pensions, but I remember what that time was like. We were to some extent flying blind. It was something that hadn’t happened in the past 100 years. And we had to rely on the best available information at the time from scientists and medical experts and act in good faith.

Would we do things differently now? Yes. Were mistakes made throughout the course of the pandemic? Yes, of course they were.
“But we’ve learned from that, and, as a result, I think it is highly unlikely that, in the future, we would consider closing schools, knowing what we now know about the impact that it had on young people.

Speaking on Times Radio about GCSE regional disparities because of Covid-19 Quince said:

It’s a huge priority. Ensuring that wherever you live up and down our country that you have access to a world-class education, and you have the same opportunity – whether you live in Bournemouth or Barnsley – is really important to us, and every year up until the pandemic we’ve been closing the attainment gap.

The pandemic has without question set us back on that mission. But to say that I am back on that with gusto would be an understatement.

It is my mission as schools ministers to ensure that wherever you live in our country, that you have that same level of opportunity.

The head of the headteachers’ union has warned that GCSE results will be uneven across the country because of the varying impact of the pandemic – describing the government’s Covid recovery programme as “lacklustre and chaotic”.

The number of top grades at A-level fell sharply this year and a similar decline is anticipated for GCSE grades as the government seeks to reverse the grade inflation caused by teacher assessment during the pandemic.

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders said:

The fact that grades will be lower than last year is no reflection on the performance of pupils but the result of a decision by the government and exam regulator Ofqual to begin returning grades to the 2019 standard in two steps.

GCSE marks reached an all-time high in 2021 as 28.9% of pupils were awarded one of the top grades after exams were cancelled and results were instead determined by their teachers.

This year there could be 230,000 fewer top grades in the UK compared with 2021, but 230,000 more than 2019, according to Alan Smithers, director of the centre for education and employment research at the University of Buckingham.

The disruption to learning experienced across the country despite remote learning would also result in uneven results, Barton said.

Schools have not been helped by the government’s lacklustre and chaotic support for education recovery.

Read the full story by my colleague Geneva Abdul here:

This year’s GCSE results for England and Wales are expected to confirm a widening north-south education gap, prompting a prediction that the government will miss one of its key levelling-up targets if it continues to hold back pupils in the north of England.

My colleague Matt Weaver reports:

A coalition of school leaders, charities and the Northern Powerhouse Partnership has written to the Conservative leadership candidates urging them to commit to fixing growing regional disparities in education.

They predicted Thursday’s results would show 24.4% of pupils in the north-east of England achieving GSCE grade seven or above, compared with 37.8% in London. The forecast followed “stark” regional disparities that were exposed in A-level results last week, with the top grades falling faster in the north-east compared with the south-east.

The joint letter told Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss that the government’s levelling up target of increasing exam standards in the worst performing areas by a third by 2030 would not happen unless “place-based challenges, such as health and housing” were also addressed at the same time.

The letter by the Northern Powerhouse, Schools North East and the education charity Shine, said: “Regional disparities in attainment are getting worse, not better.”

Read the full piece here:

Good morning! And welcome to the Guardian’s GCSE liveblog, where I’ll be keeping you up to date with all the news.

This is the first year that students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will get GCSE results which – for the first time in two years – are based on public exams. Noting the serious disruption that students faced during the Covid pandemic, this year’s grade boundaries will be more generous, exam boards have said.

We’ll have a better picture of what has happened nationally soon, but we also want to hear your stories! Did you or a family member get the grades they wanted? How has the experience been? And what are your plans now? Please send lovely pics to me on [email protected] or tweet me on @lexytopping because it really is the best bit of doing the liveblog!