What GCSE results actually look like across England

By Yoosuf Nadat20 September 20268 min read

Figures from summer 2026. GCSE results are published each August; this article will be reviewed when the next set lands.

The headline

In summer 2026, 30.2% of GCSE results awarded to 16-year-olds in London were grade 7 or above. In the North East, the figure was 19.0%.

That 11.2 percentage point difference is the widest regional gap in the available record. Ofqual also publishes its all-ages table for England, on which the gap comes out slightly differently (28.6% against 17.7%, a 10.9 point spread), but on that measure too it is the largest since the data series began in 2010. In 2025 it was 10.6 points. In 2019, before the pandemic, it was 9.3.

The gap is not new. What is notable about 2026 is that it is still growing.

The full regional picture

Ofqual’s figures for 16-year-olds in England, showing the proportion of results at grade 7 or above:

Grade 7 or above, 16-year-olds in England, summer 2026. Source: Ofqual, Table 19b. London in gold.

Proportion of GCSE results at grade 7 or above, 16-year-olds in England, summer 2026. Source: Ofqual, Table 19b.
Region	Grade 7+
London	30.2%
South East	25.8%
East of England	23.1%
South West	22.2%
Yorkshire and the Humber	20.6%
North West	20.1%
West Midlands	19.7%
East Midlands	19.4%
North East	19.0%
England average	23.1%

The England average was 23.1%.

Two things stand out. London is not merely first: it is 4.4 points clear of the South East in second place, a bigger margin than separates second place from eighth. And the seven regions from Yorkshire downward are clustered within 1.6 points of each other. The story is less “north versus south” than “London versus everywhere”.

FFT Education Datalab noted another detail worth holding onto: London is the only English region where 2026 results at grade 7 and above are perceptibly higher than they were in 2019. The rest of the country has broadly returned to where it started.

Three reasons the number is less simple than it looks

The figure depends on which table you read. Ofqual publishes regional results two ways. Table 19a covers all ages: every candidate entered that summer, including post-16 students resitting Maths and English, private candidates and adult entries. Table 19b covers 16-year-olds only, the cohort sitting GCSEs at the normal age. The 19b numbers run higher, because the resitter population in 19a is weighted towards students retaking after a grade 3 or below, which pulls the grade 7+ share down. Every figure in the table above is 19b. Read the same rows off 19a and they all move. When you see a regional gap quoted without a source, it is worth knowing which one it came from.

These are percentages of entries, not pupils. A region where students each sit ten GCSEs contributes more entries than one where they sit seven. That matters more than it sounds, because entry patterns differ sharply by region. In 2025, state school pupils in London entered an average of 7.79 GCSEs, against 6.6 in the North East. Including vocational and technical qualifications narrows it, to 8.1 against 7.5, but does not close it.

Subject mix shifts the percentages on its own. London schools have tended to enter students for traditional GCSEs rather than vocational equivalents, and have done so for years. Two regions with identically capable students would still report different grade 7+ percentages if one entered more students for subjects where top grades are harder to reach. Some of the gap is a measurement artefact rather than a difference in learning.

None of this makes the gap imaginary. It does mean the true difference is probably somewhat smaller than the headline suggests.

So why does London do better?

This has been studied for two decades, and the answer is more interesting than the usual explanations offered on results day.

It probably isn’t the schools. Simon Burgess’s analysis found that the London advantage in pupil progress largely disappears once ethnicity is included in the model. London has a markedly different demographic profile from the rest of England, and several ethnic groups strongly represented in London have higher average attainment nationally, not just in London. On that reading, London’s schools are doing something closer to an ordinary job with an unusual intake.

The gap is mostly established before secondary school. Work by Blanden and colleagues found that London’s disadvantaged pupils began pulling ahead in the late 1990s, at primary as well as secondary level, and that strong Key Stage 2 attainment is a major contributor to the later GCSE picture. By the time a London student walks into Year 7, much of the advantage already exists.

The popular explanation has a timing problem. The improvement in London schools is often credited to the London Challenge and similar interventions from the mid-2000s. Blanden’s research found the improvement began before those programmes started. Something raised attainment in London, but the policies usually given the credit arrived too late to be the cause.

London’s real distinction is at the bottom, not the top. The most striking finding is not that London’s strongest students do well. It is that London’s poorest students do far better than poor students elsewhere. Around half of London pupils eligible for free school meals reached the old five-good-GCSEs benchmark, against roughly a third outside the capital. London’s attainment gap between rich and poor is narrower than any other region’s. And that, more than the headline, is what other regions have spent twenty years trying to copy.

And it isn’t only London. Research covering the same period found that Manchester and Birmingham also outperformed the rest of England, and that on some measures of secondary progress Birmingham students outperformed London’s. Regional averages hide a lot of city-level variation.

What about the rest of the UK?

The four nations do not sit on a common scale, and comparing them requires care.

Northern Ireland reported the highest share of top grades in 2026: 31.7% at grade A/7 or above, against 21.8% in England and 19.6% in Wales. At grade C/4 and above, Northern Ireland reached 83.6%, England 67.0% and Wales 62.3%.

Those numbers are not directly comparable. England grades GCSEs 9 to 1. Wales retains A* to G through WJEC. Northern Ireland’s CCEA uses A* to G with an extra C* grade between B and C, roughly equivalent to England’s grade 5. The systems differ in structure, entry patterns and cohort, and the regulators themselves caution against reading across.

Scotland is not in the comparison at all, and the reason is not an oversight. Scotland does not award GCSEs. Scottish students take National 5 qualifications, usually in S4 at ages 15 to 16, graded A to D, and results are published in early August rather than late. National 5 is the closest equivalent to a GCSE and is accepted as such by English schools and universities, but it is a different qualification in a different framework. Any table that places Scotland alongside the English regions is comparing two things that were never built to be compared.

What this means for an individual student

Almost nothing, and that is the point worth taking away.

A regional average is the mean of hundreds of thousands of individual results spread across schools that differ enormously from one another. The variation within any English region dwarfs the variation between regions. A student at a strong school in the North East will do better than a student at a weak school in London, and no regional statistic changes that.

The research also suggests that what drives the gap is demographic composition and prior attainment rather than anything about the region itself. A child does not attain less because of where they live. The regional figure is a summary of who lives where, and of what happened in primary school, not a forecast for any particular student.

Three things follow, and they are more useful than the headline:

The gap opens early. If the London advantage is substantially in place by the end of primary school, the moment that matters is well before Year 11. Intervention at the point results start slipping is late.

The gap that matters most is not geographic. Every English region has an attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. London’s is narrowest. That gap is larger, more consistent, and more responsive to intervention than the regional one.

Access to support has become less geographic than it was. A decade ago, finding a subject specialist in a small town meant whoever happened to be nearby. That constraint has largely gone. Where a student lives now limits which tutor they can work with far less than it used to.

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Sources

Linking to primary sources is part of why this article is worth linking to.