Children in London and the south-east are 57% more likely to get into universities ranked among the top third than their counterparts in the north, according to research by the children’s commissioner for England.



Launching a year-long investigation into why many children in the north get left behind, Anne Longfield said the under-performance of secondary schools in the north of England was of “huge concern”, with poorer pupils getting significantly worse GCSE results. “London and the south-east is racing ahead,” she said.

Longfield said she wanted to understand why the north-east had the best primary schools in the country, but the lowest adult employment rate: 71.1% compared with 78% in the south-east, according to September figures from the Office for National Statistics.

Of primary schools in Redcar and Cleveland, 95% are deemed “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted. But the same local authority is in the bottom 20 of all 149 council areas in England when it comes to the progress a pupil makes from the end of primary school to the end of secondary school.

The north-east is far better at helping young people into apprenticeships, however: 20% of school leavers in Hartlepool become apprentices, compared with just 4% in London.

“We see that children start well but a gap emerges while they are at secondary school. That, coupled with the paucity of job prospects in some areas, seem to combine to really open up a gap that many children can’t get beyond,” said Longfield.

She said she would be exploring the idea of companies from more affluent areas offering work experience placements to students from poorer areas with higher levels of unemployment. Pupils in a school in Bradford recently complained to her that their work placement scheme had been scrapped because of cost cutting, the commissioner said.

Just 34% of disadvantaged children in the north of England overall get five GCSEs A*-C, including English and maths, compared with 48% of similar pupils in London.

Of the 20 worst performing local authorities in England for GCSE results, 12 are in the north, with Knowsley and Blackpool at the bottom and Bradford, Middlesbrough, Kingston upon Hull and Manchester not far behind. Just one northern council area makes the top 20: Trafford in Greater Manchester.

Explaining the knock-on effect for the further education opportunities, Longfield said: “School leavers in London and the south-east are at least 57% more likely to go to a top-third university.”

Preliminary research carried out by Longfield’s team has found that the north of England’s education system is not uniformly poor. Children in the north-west performed better than their counterparts in London in verbal comprehension tests at 11, according to analysis of data collected as part of the Institute of Education’s Millennium Cohort Study. North-west children also have among the lowest instances of mental illness in the country, though those in the north-east and Yorkshire fare less well.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England. Photograph: Richard Gardner/Rex/Shutterstock

A succession of experts have expressed concerns about the north-south divide in education. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the outgoing chief inspector of schools, last year blamed poor teaching for the “troubling gap between the performance of secondary schools in the north and Midlands and secondary schools in the rest of the country”.

Last month Sir Nick Weller, who runs an academy chain with schools in the north, advised the government to pilot a new “teach north” scheme to attract and retain talented newly qualified teachers in disadvantaged schools in the region.

Schools in the north typically receive less funding per pupil than those in London despite having lower attainment and serving communities with greater disadvantage, Weller reported in A Northern Powerhouse Schools Strategy, commissioned by the Department for Education.

He singled out “monocultural disadvantage” as being “a particular problem in the north, whether this is white working-class children in former mining towns or Pakistani students in former mill towns, for example”.

Louise Casey's integration plan is behind the times Read more

“In some areas there is little that can be done about the monocultural makeup of schools. In others, however, two communities can live close by locally, but self-select separate schools for their different communities,” Weller wrote, adding: “Schools with high concentrations of monocultural disadvantage should consider how changing their admissions policy might encourage a more diverse mix of students, for example randomised selection from a city-wide or whole-town catchment.”

In her review into segregation in Britain released this week, Dame Louise Casey said radical change was needed to address monocultural schools, “not just in relation to admissions but also to the fundamentals of what is taught in schools to grow tolerant, resilient pupils, capable of reflective, critical thinking”.

She said she had been particularly struck by a survey of pupils in a non-faith secondary school with a high Asian population. Pupils had been asked to identify the percentage Asian population of Britain and their estimates ranged from 50% to 90% – the actual figure is 7% – presumably reflecting their experience in the local community, and a relative lack of knowledge about the country as a whole.

Longfield said she would try to assess how monocultural education affects children’s outcomes.

According to research by the thinktank Demos, seven of the 10 areas with the most disproportionately high levels of ethnic concentration in particular schools were in the north, with Blackburn with Darwen worst, along with Bradford, Rochdale, Kirklees, Oldham, Rotherham and Manchester.