Congratulations to all the students, teachers, and the rest of the school staff on achieving some outstanding GCSE and A-Level results across Wansbeck this past week.

The amount of hard work and dedication that has gone into making this possible over the past 2 years I think is underestimated, and it is really a testament to just how much teaching staff care and how motivated and inspired our students are that following such a disruptive period there are a range of impressive results around the constituency.

Ashington Academy announced their best ever GCSE results today despite this being the first year since 2019 that exams have gone ahead as normal. The school achieved 74% of their students receiving 5 passes or higher (including English and Maths) with some outstanding individual results. Likewise Bedlington Academy have recorded some fantastic results with a rise of 27% in the number of children achieving a 5 or above in English and Maths since 2019.

These are just a couple of examples of fantastic results from schools and individuals across the constituency in Ashington, Bedlington, Morpeth and everywhere in between.

Despite this, statistics from the latest set of A-Level and GCSE results show that the North-South divide continues to grow when it comes to educational attainment. Stark regional disparities that were crystallized during the pandemic have left schools in the North East fighting against the tide to keep up.

For example the North East was completely failed by the National Tutoring Programme designed to help kids catch up on lost learning throughout the pandemic, where according to the Guardian newspaper ‘Only 58.8% of target schools in the north-east benefited from the programme compared with 96.1% of those targeted in the south-east and 100% in the south-west’.

Our teachers and students are fighting an uphill battle in the backdrop of 12 years of austerity and 2 years of pandemic disruption that has hit the North East particularly hard. The way our schools are funded and managed needs a total rethink if we are to reverse this trend, yet I fear whoever becomes the next Prime Minister has no interest in taking the measures that are necessary to do so.

Once again congratulations and well done to all the students and teachers who have received A-Level or GCSE results in Wansbeck this past week in the face of extremely difficult conditions and good luck in the future whatever path you may have chosen to take.