The regional divide proves the need for more maths schools, August 2025

For students in England, the odds of studying advanced maths vary dramatically depending on their postcode.

This year’s exam results once again laid bare England’s regional divides. Much of the commentary has rightly focused on attainment gaps, with students in the North East achieving far fewer top grades than their peers in London.

But if we look just at mathematics – the most popular A-level subject and one of the most powerful drivers of social mobility – the inequalities run deeper than grades.

The regional divide in maths

In London, one in five 18-year-olds entered A-level mathematics this year, compared with fewer than one in 10 in the North East. For further maths, the disparity is starker still: 4 per cent in London versus barely 1 per cent in the North East.

While the North East is the region with the lowest level of entries, this disparity is part of a wider North-South divide. Students in the South are 50 per cent more likely to study A-level maths, and twice as likely to study further maths.

And when students do take the subjects, their chances of top grades also diverge. In the South, 45 per cent achieved an A or A* in maths this year, compared with 38 per cent in the North and 36 per cent in the Midlands. The trend in further maths is similar.

At GCSE, the proportion of students achieving grade 7 or higher (A or above in old money) in GCSE mathematics is 18 per cent in both the North and the Midlands, compared with 29 per cent in London – an 11-point gap.

At the top of the attainment chart, students in London are more than twice as likely as their northern peers to achieve a grade 9.

Unequal opportunities

We know that studying maths after GCSE pays dividends. Having A-level maths provides an 11 per cent earnings premium, and further maths leads to even higher returns. More importantly, maths and further maths are facilitating subjects that open doors to mathematics, physics, engineering and computer science at the UK’s most competitive universities. They are, in short, passports to opportunity.

Yet these opportunities are not equally shared.

International comparisons sharpen the concern. Only 17 per cent of young people in England study any advanced maths beyond age 16. In most Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, the figure is over 50 per cent.

This shortfall threatens our ambition to remain a global leader in technology, data science and artificial intelligence. Without a stronger, fairer maths pipeline, the UK risks falling behind.

Impact of maths schools

It was with these issues in mind that the government sought to open 11 university maths schools – specialist sixth forms run in partnership with prestigious universities.

The schools are state-funded, providing free and outstanding education to young mathematical scientists, as well as strong outreach into local schools.

Nine of these schools are now open, and we are proud of our results: over 70 per cent of all grades achieved by our students this summer were A*/A. Last summer 22 per cent progressed to Oxford or Cambridge and over 80 per cent to Russell Group universities.

Crucially, this success is not confined to already-advantaged students. Maths schools have a clear mission to widen participation: 12 per cent of their students are eligible for free school meals, compared with just 7 per cent of all A-level maths students and 5 per cent of all A-level further maths students nationally

And through the substantive outreach work that each maths school leads in support of schools in its area, this proportion is set to increase.

Plans in limbo

Despite this success, the ambition for every English region to host a university maths school seems to have come to a standstill. The North East – the region most affected by geographical disparities – is still without a school.

So, too, is the East Midlands, where maths uptake and outcomes are also worryingly low.

Advanced plans for new schools in both regions, led by Durham University and the University of Nottingham, had already been approved, but their implementation is now on hold.

The schools have been identified as part of a Department for Education review of schools set to open under the free schools programme, launched in October 2024.

Ten months later, no decisions have been made, leaving Durham and Nottingham’s planned maths schools in limbo.

If we are serious about tackling educational inequality, levelling up opportunity and preparing the workforce for the technologically advanced economy of the future, then expanding maths schools where they are most needed is not optional – it is urgent.

Approving the Durham and Nottingham schools would be a tangible, cost-effective step towards making sure that postcode no longer decides who gets to study advanced maths.

Dan Abramson OBE is CEO of U-Maths, the University Maths Schools Network

Dan Abramson