「经济学人」Flunking it

Blame rising absenteeism

For teenagers, August is make-or break time. On August 21st, 700,000 16-year-olds in England received their GCSE exam marks, joining the 300,000 18-year-olds who got their A-level grades a week earlier. The results show that the gap in attainment between pupils in London and the rest of the country continued to widen. In 2019 the average GCSE grade in the capital was 6% above the English average. It has now stretched to 10% (see chart). The same trend is true for A-levels.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, frets about the “lack of progress for children from white working-class backgrounds”. Detailed data for this year have still to come, but the attainment gap at 16 between white children in England on free school meals (ie, from low-income families) and all others rose by four percentage points in the five years from 2018-19.

The government wants to narrow that gap. Other poor children on free school meals have not fallen behind in recent years. At 16 ethnic Chinese children who are also disadvantaged are 39 months ahead of their white British peers in England.

Turning up for class would help. Fully 23% of white British children were persistently absent last year, compared with 4% for ethnic Chinese. The Education Policy Institute, a think-tank, finds that the rising attainment gap since 2019 among disadvantaged children can be entirely explained by increased absenteeism.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Flunking it”(Aug 21st 2025)

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