After the exam fiascos of the past few years, many A-level students today will have opened their results to crushing, if somewhat predictable, disappointment. It has been the biggest drop in grades in England on record, as a result of the government’s policy to return to pre-pandemic grading.
The proportion of A*-A grades fell from 35.9% in 2022 to 26.5%. The drop was steepest in England – in Wales and Northern Ireland, examiners took into account the impact of the pandemic. After all, these were the kids who missed out on sitting their GCSEs.
Now, it’s easy to look at these falling rates and not be concerned – isn’t it just a return to normality after Covid? In some ways, it is. After all, grades did rise under lockdown when teachers were tasked with predicting the entire trajectory of a student’s future prospects based on coursework and historical attainment trends in the school.
But make no mistake, there is more at play here. Presenting these plummeting figures as simply the re-emergence of normality obscures the multitude of longer-term political factors that have come to bear on this cohort of year 13s. It conveniently deflects blame away from those whose policies have undermined secondary education in England for years.
Research from 2021 suggested that poorer students are up to three A-level grades behind their richer peers. And today’s results highlight sharp regional disparities within this deeply socioeconomically unequal country: there was an eight-percentage-point gap in top grades between south-east England and the north-east. And on the other end of the A* spectrum are the disadvantaged students getting low grades – this year saw a sharp increase in the number of E or U (unclassified) marks given out.
Let’s be clear about this: today’s 18-year-olds were barely in primary school when the then chancellor George Osborne started his programme of spending cuts in the June 2010 budget, but they are undoubtedly the children of austerity.
Throughout their primary and secondary school years, they’ve seen class sizes rise, extracurricular opportunities disappear and increasing numbers of their teachers leave the profession. Today’s school-leavers who have grown up in the poorest of homes will have felt their parents’ wages and benefits shrink while the cost of living has rocketed.
Over my seven years teaching in some of the most deprived areas of the country, I’ve seen how soaring levels of poverty affect young people academically and pastorally – and how this is compounded by the triple jeopardy of savage cuts to public services, wage stagnation and a lack of meaningful government support for those families who need it most. I have seen pupils visibly hungry in the morning or without a coat or decent shoes in the winter.
And with education maintenance allowance long scrapped in England (it provided financial support to keep young people in 16-19 education), there is little support available to make sure older teenagers aren’t missing school to take on a part-time job to subsidise their parents’ low wages.
This is what comes to mind when I see headlines about falling grades. Unlike many politicians, teachers can’t turn a blind eye to the abject poverty that exists in this country because we are faced with it every day in our classrooms. Yes, Covid is one of the factors, but it is poverty that is the untold story in today’s results. So, sure, call falling grades a “return to normality” – the problem is that what passes for “normal” in education these days is simply not good enough.
Nadeine Asbali is a secondary school teacher in London
