A level Results Day 2026 delivered a record that nobody really wanted.

The gap between London and the lowest-performing English regions for top A level grades now stands at 9.6 percentage points – the widest since the current grading system began in 2010. And for the first time, the person in Number 10 built their entire political project on the argument that Westminster cannot always fix problems like this.

Andy Burnham’s Head north was published in 2024 as a mayor’s manifesto. Weeks into his premiership, it is becoming a governing programme. The A level results are the sharpest test yet of whether its central claim, that power over life chances should sit closer to the people, should extend to education itself.

Some might say

Let’s start with the data. In London, 32.7 per cent of A level entries were awarded A or A*, the highest of any English region and up from 32.1 per cent last year.

In the North East and the East Midlands, the figure is 23.1 per cent, with the East Midlands recording the biggest fall of any region, down from 23.8 per cent. The trend matters more than the snapshot. Before the pandemic, the London–North East gap was 3.9 percentage points; it is now 9.6. At A* it has widened from 2 points to 5.1. And FFT Education Datalab’s same-day analysis notes that the North East is the only English region whose top-grade share has not risen meaningfully above its 2019 baseline, a starting line that Schools North East was already calling unacceptably unequal.

Progression tells a superficially happier story. UCAS reported a record 255,130 UK 18-year-olds placed on results day, including a record 20,280 English 18-year-olds from the most disadvantaged POLAR4 areas. But TASO’s analysis finds the entry-rate gap between the most and least deprived quintiles stuck around 22 percentage points. Record volume is not narrowing inequality, and the grades data shows where the pipeline problem starts.

Don’t look back in anger

Why has no national government cracked this?

Three structural explanations stand out. Firstly, money. The Institute for Fiscal Studies finds that roughly half of the £9bn real-terms increase in school funding since 2019–20 has been absorbed by rising SEND costs, while funding per 16–19 student in colleges, which serve the most disadvantaged, most regionally concentrated learners, and where just 12.8 percent of A level entries got top grades this year against 48.6 per cent in independent schools, remains 13 per cent below 2009–10 levels.

Secondly, churn. National interventions rarely outlive the ministers who launch them. The Institute for Government’s study of the London Challenge, the one intervention that demonstrably moved a region from worst to best, found its Greater Manchester and Black Country replications had a “more mixed” record, partly because “they had less time for these practices to properly embed.” Sustained, place-sensitive improvement is precisely what Westminster’s electoral cycle is bad at.

Thirdly, the problem is not really a schools problem. A Schools Week analysis of the North East argued that no government has grasped, or funded, the interaction between attainment, deprivation and weak local labour markets. With one million young people now NEET and the Milburn review warning of 1.25 million by the early 2030s, the case that attainment gaps are a symptom of place-based economic failure is getting harder to dismiss.

This is the one

So what is Andy Burnham actually proposing? Precision matters, because three things are being conflated in the coverage.

His book, written alongside Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram, proposed: a “restructured education system”, an end to the university-first default in English schooling, parity between technical and academic routes, and a federal-style rewiring of the UK state – a rallying cry, not a white paper. He backed up his theory with the announcement that schools across England will be told to adapt curricula for over-14s to local labour markets from 2028, explicitly modelled on the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate (MBacc) he discusses in his book.

The MBacc launched in around 10 pilot schools in September 2024 with seven “gateways” aligned to local growth sectors and a full rollout target of 2030. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act – which received royal assent in April, before Burnham reached Downing Street – devolves adult skills funding and joint ownership of local skills improvement plans to strategic authorities, but leaves schools and higher education firmly reserved.

It’s worth pointing out that a national instruction to localise curricula is still a national instruction. The genuinely devolutionary move is the 16–19 transfer.

Whatever

For higher education, this is not someone else’s turf war.

First up, the pipeline changes. Universities in mayoral areas should plan for growing numbers of applicants holding MBacc-style technical profiles rather than three predictable A levels. T-level results were up 65 per cent this year, and admissions, foundation provision and pre-entry support built around the traditional sixth-former will need rethinking.

Secondly, access is regionalising anyway. The Office for Students is replacing Uni Connect with regional access partnerships from 2027–28, and London analysis has argued for regional risk registers that match interventions to locally specific barriers. The sector was converging on regional coordination before Burnham arrived; the question is whether providers shape these structures or have them shaped by mayors.

Thirdly, money and mission. Established mayoral authorities are gaining influence over regional R&D funding, and the lifelong learning entitlement opens from September, with modular funding tied to priority skills. If mayors gain a voice in defining those priorities locally, the LLE becomes a devolution instrument by stealth, and universities without a seat at their combined authority’s table will find their portfolio shaped in rooms they are not in.

The masterplan

The government should do four things.

Legislate the 16–19 transfer, but stage it: powers follow demonstrated capacity, with a statutory national floor of entitlement so no young person’s options depend on their mayor’s ideology. Keep assessment, qualifications regulation, learning from Wales, and comparable, published regional data at national level. Commission an independent evaluation of the MBacc now, reporting before the 2028 rollout, and be genuinely willing to adjust. And give universities formal status in strategic authorities’ skills and innovation planning, because the institutions that anchor regional economies cannot be an afterthought in a policy about regional economies.

The results show the cost of decades of centrally run, regionally indifferent education policy: the postcode lottery already exists; it is just run from Whitehall. Burnham’s wager is that accountable regional power can do better. The evidence says it might, if built carefully.

The unforgivable outcome would be to change who holds the pen without changing anything for the student in Sunderland or Skegness opening an envelope next August.