If ever there was a cohort of school leavers who deserved congratulations on their A-level results, it is surely the class of 2022, who received their grades on Thursday. No group of sixth formers in postwar Britain has suffered a more disrupted education than they have. The Covid pandemic left prolonged and ineradicable marks on their schooling. It ruptured their teaching and disturbed their study, their exams and their university applications. It also had an often traumatic impact on their home lives, those of their families and friends, and their own development into young adults. There were also very many direct sufferers from the virus itself, although relatively fewer serious cases.
In spite of all this, the 2022 A-level class have made the grade. They should wear their achievement as a generational badge of honour. This is also the conclusion to be drawn from the results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland as a whole. Nearly 426,000 students had their university places confirmed on Thursday. This is a slight fall from last year, but it is also overwhelming evidence that there remains huge public demand for higher education in modern Britain, which the pandemic and its associated disruptions has done little to deflect. Significantly, demand is higher than ever among the most socially disadvantaged students too, whose acceptance numbers went up, not down. In the 2020s, education remains the springboard to social mobility.
This year’s grades were lower overall than in 2021. The top A and A* grades were down by 8.4%. This is unsurprising, since these 2022 grades were based on exams, while those of 2021 were not. The system, in short, is correcting itself. Teacher assessment has always tended to be more generous, and the generosity of teachers in the private school system was particularly marked in 2021 in comparison with the relatively more demanding state sector. Grade inflation certainly needs to be monitored everywhere that it occurs, but it does not discredit the system, and it is wrong to pretend that it does.
Those who are concerned about the education system should look instead at the social and geographical divides in these results. There is a shameful gap, as ever, between the privileged private and underprivileged state sectors, with students at the former almost as twice as likely to get an A or A*. But there are important geographical disparities too, with a widening attainment gap between the relatively prosperous south-east and London compared with the north-east. This reflects longstanding disparities in investment. It confirms that levelling up the life chances of this and the next generation has a long way to go.
This is a transitional year for higher education in Britain after Covid’s disruptions. But a transition to what? Not pre-Covid conditions. Both secondary and higher education instead seem candidates for government spending cuts this winter. The underinvestment just noted in the north-east is likely to be replicated elsewhere in the coming years. Universities, which are heavily dependent on domestic fee income that the Treasury will not want to increase (and may try to cut), are already facing a real-terms decline as inflation moves above 10% and fees remain frozen. This will increase the pressure on them to expand their overseas student intake, where higher fees apply. School leavers and their families rightly continue to see university education as the route to a better life. Government policy ensures that universities will struggle to meet public demand.
