Short-term, place-sensitive responses will be essential to closing the Covid-induced geographic rift in learning and preventing disparities in attainment from widening.
Schools have been hit hard by Covid-19, with GCSE exams having been cancelled for two years running. The latest data from Cities Outlook 2022 indicates that the move to internal assessments of GCSEs inflated grades more in cities that underperformed pre-pandemic. However, this obscured entrenched spatial inequalities in learning, exacerbated by Covid-19. Swift, place-sensitive policies and funding may help address widening educational disparities as we return to in-person testing.
In anticipation of the impact of Covid-19 on learning, the Department for Education (DfE) cancelled all GCSE exams for the summers of 2020 and 2021. Instead, grades were primarily based on an internal assessment of student performance. As shown in Figure 1, an over-optimistic prediction of grades resulted in them being strongly biased upwards across all cities in England. While the distribution of marks remained roughly similar, the average increase in a city’s GCSE standard pass rate between 2019 and 2020 was approximately 6.6 percentage points.
Source: ONS; Centre for Cities’ own calculations
A large part of the commentary on GCSE grade inflation centred on wealthier students benefitting the most from it. Paradoxically, the picture was surprisingly different from a geographic perspective. As shown in Figure 2, the greatest increase in GCSE pass rates during Covid-19 was observed in the cities that had performed worst for GCSE grades in 2019.
Source: ONS; Centre for Cities’ own calculations
A prime example of the above is the case of Plymouth and Cambridge. With only 56.7% of students achieving a standard pass rate, Plymouth ranked close-to-last amongst all cities in 2019, while Cambridge was second-highest with a 73.8% pass rate. Within one year, the gap was narrowed by 8.1 percentage points, as Plymouth’s GCSE pass rate was inflated to 69.0%.
So, looking at GCSE grades alone, the intercity gap in attainment was seemingly narrowed during the pandemic. However, the reality is likely to be quite the opposite, with grade inflation – which appears to be more common in cities with larger shares of disadvantaged and low-performing pupils – obscuring the true trend.
An evidence review by the Education Endowment Foundation finds that Covid-19 measures have been detrimental to students’ learning, with students from poorer backgrounds ending up struggling more. This would imply that there is a geography to learning losses – all else held constant, cities with more disadvantaged pupils would have been disproportionately adversely affected by Covid-19.
Consequently, observed attainment inequalities may ‘bounce back’ to starker levels than in 2019 once we return to in-person examinations for GCSEs this summer (even with more generous marking), and once Covid-induced learning losses are revealed. Moreover, this affects all students – not just this year’s school leavers. Without adequate policy action, the geographic rift in attainment (and career opportunities) will extend to future cohorts.
Section 3.3 of the Levelling Up White Paper provides an overview of some upcoming interventions for reducing educational inequalities (e.g. the creation of Educational Investment Areas). The policies are very much welcome, and we expect to see more details in the upcoming Schools White Paper. However, these are just medium- or long-term solutions. Short-term, place-sensitive responses are also essential to closing the Covid-induced geographic rift in learning and, consequently, in preventing disparities in attainment from widening.
You can see how your city performs on a range of data, including education and skills, via City Monitor, our interactive data tool.
Leave a comment
Be the first to add a comment.