Higher levels of immigration and the distorting effects of league tables may explain why children in England outperform those in Wales at GCSEs, according to research.
The study by the Education Policy Institute found children in Wales did as well as or better than their peers in England until the end of primary school. But by the time of GCSEs at the age of 16, those in England were more likely to get grade C or above.
The new study says that one difference is that England has more than twice as many pupils from minority ethnic groups, “who tend to perform better at GCSE level”.
England’s school-age population has about 30% of pupils from minority ethnic families, compared with just 12% in Wales.
The report’s author, Luke Sibieta, said: “There seems little doubt that teenagers in Wales display worse educational outcomes than children in England. However, we also found evidence that younger pupils in Wales perform much better, equalling the literacy levels of pupils in England. It is important that policymakers understand what might be driving the different performance gaps.”
The study also said that higher levels of poverty in Wales may play a part, and that the relative gap between rich and poor in Wales was wider than the gap in England.
That finding was disputed by Welsh educationalists, who pointed to results from the OECD’s Pisa survey in 2015 as showing that the gap between rich and poor pupils in Wales was smaller than that in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
A spokesperson for the Welsh government said: “Of course we are committed to raising standards and aspirations for all young people. This is why we are delivering the biggest education reform programme anywhere in the UK.
“Since 2016, we’ve increased investment for our poorest pupils, reformed teacher training, and introduced the first ever programme to support our more able learners. This is in addition to our major curriculum and assessment reforms.”
The report suggests that performance tables in English schools, used by the government as a means of assessment, may play a part in the difference.
“Evidence suggests Wales’s abolition of school league tables reduced GCSE performance relative to England, but some of this might have come through greater incentives in England to use vocational qualifications to boost league table positions,” the report states.
Pressure to keep a school’s results above the English government’s floor standards encouraged many into entering pupils for vocational GCSE-equivalents.
The researchers plan further studies “to uncover the relative importance of family background and schools in explaining these cross-country differences” between Wales and England.
Tim Pratt, the director of the Association of School and College Leaders Cymru, said it was important to remember that Wales had many areas of significant disadvantage.
“Funding for schools in Wales is even worse than it is in England and needs to be improved as a matter of urgency if our ambitious plans for an exciting and forward-thinking new curriculum in Wales are to be turned into reality,” Pratt said.
The study says exam changes in both countries has created “significant challenges for universities and employers seeking to make comparisons in applicants’ GCSEs taken in England and Wales, and across different years”.