Ethnicity
Differences in educational attainment observed by ethnicity, also continue into the 16-19 phase.
We use the largest group, White British students, as the comparison group, such that the gap for these students is set to zero in each year. As with earlier educational phases, we are most interested in how attainment gaps have changed since before the pandemic. We therefore show a snapshot of attainment (relative to White British students) for each ethnic group in both 2019 and 2022.
Figure E1: Higher attaining students pulled further away from White British students since 2019
We see that broadly speaking, the groups with the highest or lowest grades (relative to White British) change little between 2019 and 2022. Grades increased for students from most ethnic backgrounds over this period, and the groups attaining more highly than White British students pulled even further away. These increases since 2019 (relative to White British students) were most pronounced amongst some of the already highest attaining ethnic groups. Those from Any Other Asian background were 1.8 grades ahead of White British students, Indian students were 2.7 grades ahead, and Chinese students were 4.3 grades ahead.
Amongst the ethnic groups with lower attainment (relative to White British students), there was more variation in the change since 2019. Black Caribbean and White and Black Caribbean students fell further behind, while the attainment of traveller of Irish heritage students increased substantially relative to White British students since 2019. However, the number of students in this group is small, meaning this result should be treated with caution.