Our Research and Policy Manager, Kevin Latham, looks at this year’s GCSE results data in more detail to highlight persistent inequalities within the education system.

The overwhelming message from this week’s GCSE results is perhaps ‘steady as we go’ – with the positives and negatives that come with that. However, this reassuring consistency and stability hides structural inequalities in our education system that few seem willing to address.

With a few small exceptions (like the widening gap between grammars and comprehensives) the proportions of passes at different levels, gaps between school types, gender, regions and nations remain broadly the same as they were last year. There is also a degree of pre-covid ‘normality’ returning with many of the figures once again approaching 2019 levels.

However, a picture of stability also means persistent inequalities remain. We have seen this with a barely changed attainment gap between state comprehensives and private schools. We will have to wait until later in the year for figures on socioeconomic disadvantage but there is little here to suggest major progress will have been made in that area.

But behind the headlines, this week’s results also offer a glimpse at some of the less spoken about and hidden structural inequalities in our education system.

The results for post-16 GCSEs (which includes 17+ year old pupils retaking their GCSEs) are striking. Only 28.6% of 17+ year old pupils passed with a grade 4 or higher – barely over one in four. For maths this pass rate was just 18.2% in 2025 down from 18.6% in 2024. For English literature it was down to 23.8% from 25.4% and for English language the figure was barely changed at 23.1%, marginally up from 22.9%. The majority of these candidates will be retake pupils who we know are more likely to come from disadvantaged backgrounds. This means that barely 1 in 5 English and maths retake pupils pass.

The reasons behind this are multiple and relate to all the complexity of the socioeconomic attainment gap. However, in addition, these pupils are victims of a system that combines compulsory retakes with a comparable outcomes-based assessment system which guarantees a third of pupils will fail every year. In 2025 32.9% of pupils failed to get a pass of 4 or above, very similar to last year and previous years. Steady as we go.

The current system then for many, just adds failure to failure. Those who were in the bottom third of pupils in one year, particularly if coming from disadvantaged backgrounds failed by the education system and facing forms of persistent (steady-as-we-go) material, social and cultural deprivation, are unlikely to be given the resources necessary to pull them out of that bottom third. This is a system built to disproportionately fail the most disadvantaged pupils, severely limiting their life chances and opportunities for social mobility.

There are alternatives. Even before the pandemic, school leaders’ union ASCL called for a ‘passport’ style competency-based assessment regime to replace compulsory GCSE English. Research from maths education charity MEI supported by the Nuffield Foundation has also proposed a new approach to the GCSE maths curriculum to address this issue for post-16 retake pupils.

However, what appears to be missing is the collective will to acknowledge and address the problem. Steady as we go is easier.