Kent’s Education Divide: A-Level Results, Deprivation and Grammar Schools

Start in Tonbridge & Malling.

According to the 2026 council-area results, 46.4% of A-level entries there were awarded an A* or A. It was one of the strongest results anywhere in England. Nationally, 28.3% of English A-level entries achieved those top two grades this summer.

Now travel east.

In Folkestone & Hythe, the figure was 18.5%.

In Gravesham, 17.9%.

Same county. Same qualifications. A gap of 28.5 percentage points between the top and bottom of Kent’s table. Put another way, the proportion of A* and A grades recorded in Tonbridge & Malling was roughly two-and-a-half times that in Gravesham.

That’s where this story begins. But it isn’t where it ends.

The Shepway Vox Team has taken those results and put another set of figures underneath them: the Government’s new English Indices of Deprivation 2025, including its measures of Education, Skills and Training and, more specifically, deprivation affecting Children and Young People. We then went down another level, into individual sixth forms and schools. What emerges isn’t a simple tale in which poverty automatically produces poorer A-level grades. The broad relationship is there. So are some awkward exceptions. And sitting between the two is something Kent does rather differently from most of England: selection.

Across the rest of Kent, the 2026 A*/A figures reported in the results-day table were Tunbridge Wells 34.4%, Sevenoaks 27.6%, Canterbury 26.2%, Maidstone 24.1%, Ashford 23.4%, Thanet 22.5%, Swale 22.4%, Dover 21.9% and Dartford 20.0%. Only Tonbridge & Malling and Tunbridge Wells cleared this year’s South East figure of 31.5%; the region itself was well above England’s 28.3%.

Has it always been there?

This is where a tempting story needs a brake applied.

Ofqual’s public geographical A-level tool currently lets us look backwards from 2019 to 2025, including results by subject, but it hasn’t yet incorporated the newly released 2026 results. So we can compare this summer’s council figures with the longer national and regional direction of travel, but we can’t honestly present a seamless official 2019–2026 district series until Ofqual’s geographical download catches up.

There’s another reason not to draw a nice straight line through those seven years.

There were no normal summer A-level exams in 2020. Centre Assessment Grades were used. Exams were cancelled again in 2021 and Teacher Assessed Grades replaced them. Exams returned in 2022, but grading was deliberately set at a midpoint between 2019 and 2021. Ofqual returned to pre-pandemic grading standards in 2023. Comparing 2019 with 2020, 2021 or even 2022 as though the assessment system hadn’t changed would be statistical apples and oranges.

What we can say is that the South East was already ahead before Covid and is further ahead now. In 2019, 28.3% of A-level entries in the South East achieved A* or A against 25.2% across England. In 2026, those figures are 31.5% and 28.3%. So top grades have become more common in both, while the South East’s advantage remains.

Kent, however, isn’t moving as one place.

The latest district figures range from 46.4% to 17.9%.

So we laid another map underneath them.

The other map of Kent

The English Indices of Deprivation divide England into 33,755 small neighbourhoods, or Lower-layer Super Output Areas, and rank them from the most deprived to the least. Education is one of seven domains feeding the overall index. Crucially for this investigation, the Government also publishes a Children and Young People sub-domain within Education, Skills and Training. It gets closer to the educational conditions experienced by youngsters than the broader education measure, which also includes adult skills.

Now look at Swale.

27.8% of its neighbourhoods fall within England’s most deprived 10% on that Children and Young People education measure.

Folkestone & Hythe is barely behind: 26.9%.

Thanet stands at 24.4%. Dover, 21.7%. Canterbury, 18.5%. Then come Medway at 11.2%, Sevenoaks 10.7%, Ashford 9.9%, Maidstone 7.1%, Gravesham 6.2%, Tonbridge & Malling 5.1%, Tunbridge Wells 4.3% and Dartford 3.0%. Those are our calculations from the Government’s 2025 neighbourhood and local-authority data, covering all twelve Kent districts plus Medway.

The broader Education, Skills and Training rankings tell much the same story at the poorer end. Out of England’s 296 lower-tier council areas, where a lower ranking means greater deprivation, Swale is 19th, Thanet 39th, Folkestone & Hythe 74th, Dover 76th and Gravesham 77th. Medway follows at 84th. At the other end of Kent sit Sevenoaks at 188th, Dartford 198th, Tonbridge & Malling 210th and Tunbridge Wells 253rd.

For Folkestone & Hythe the two sets of figures land rather uncomfortably beside one another.

Only 18.5% of A-level entries in this summer’s council-area table were graded A* or A, the second-lowest figure in Kent. Meanwhile, more than one in four neighbourhoods in the district sit in England’s most deprived tenth for the Children and Young People education measure.

Swale is starker again. Its 22.4% A*/A result isn’t the lowest in Kent, but its education-deprivation rank of 19 puts it among the most educationally deprived council areas in England, while 27.8% of its neighbourhoods fall into the worst national tenth for children and young people.

At first glance, the story appears to be writing itself.

Then the numbers misbehave.

The places that don’t fit

Gravesham has Kent’s lowest A*/A figure, 17.9%.

Yet only 6.2% of its neighbourhoods are in England’s worst tenth on the Children and Young People education measure. Its deprivation doesn’t neatly explain its position at the bottom of the A-level table.

Dartford is stranger still.

Its Education, Skills and Training rank is 198th — towards the less-deprived end of England’s 296 districts — while just 3% of its neighbourhoods are in the most deprived tenth for the child education measure. Yet its 2026 A*/A figure was only 20%. If deprivation alone controlled A-level results, Dartford shouldn’t be sitting there.

The opposite happens in west Kent. Tunbridge Wells is less educationally deprived than Tonbridge & Malling — ranks 253 and 210 respectively — but Tonbridge & Malling’s A*/A figure of 46.4% leaves Tunbridge Wells’ 34.4% some distance behind.

Something else is happening.

To find it, stop looking at council boundaries.

Look at the schools.

Inside the results

Tonbridge & Malling contains some formidable A-level examination centres. The Department for Education’s latest school performance data show Tonbridge School with 168 A-level students in 2025 and an average result of A. Some 62.0% achieved the DfE’s separate measure of AAB or better, including at least two facilitating subjects. At The Judd School, 270 students produced an average A-, with 62.2% reaching that AAB measure.

Those percentages aren’t directly comparable with the A*/A council figure — they’re measuring something different — but that’s precisely the point. When we go inside the district, we can see exceptionally strong sixth-form centres sitting behind the geographical headline.

Now cross Kent to Folkestone.

The same DfE dataset gives The Folkestone School for Girls 135 A-level students and an average B-, with 17.4% achieving the AAB measure. The Harvey Grammar School had 101 students, averaging C+, with 13.2% reaching it.

Then the figures change sharply.

Brockhill Park Performing Arts College had 56 A-level students and an average result of D-, with 0% recorded at the AAB threshold. The Marsh Academy had 53 students, an average C-, and again 0% on that particular measure.

One district.

Four very different sets of outcomes.

That tells us something a council-wide percentage can’t: the educational divide doesn’t merely run between Tonbridge and Folkestone, or west and east Kent. It can run between sixth forms serving communities only a few miles apart.

And now the grammar-school system matters.

Kent isn’t an ordinary school system

The Department for Education classifies Kent as a highly selective area — one where 25% or more of state-funded secondary places are in selective schools. Medway is on the same list. KCC itself says Kent’s grammar schools cater for children in roughly the top 25% of the ability range.

That has consequences for geographical comparisons.

A council boundary doesn’t contain its children. Pupils can travel to grammar schools and other sixth forms outside the district where they live. Some Kent grammars accept applicants from outside Kent altogether, subject to their admissions arrangements. So a council-area A-level figure reflects, at least in part, the mix of examination centres located there and the pupils those centres attract. It isn’t a clean measure of the educational attainment of every 18-year-old resident behind that boundary.

This year’s national results show just how much centre type can matter. Across England, 48.6% of private-school A-level entries received A or A*, compared with 25.4% in state schools. Grammar schools recorded 43.4% top grades. Last year’s official Ofqual figures showed the same broad hierarchy: 48.4% in independent schools, 43.7% in secondary selective schools and 25.2% across all state-funded centres.

That doesn’t prove selection caused Tonbridge & Malling’s 46.4%, nor does it explain every poor result elsewhere.

But it makes pretending the school mix doesn’t matter rather difficult.

And Kent isn’t alone in this.

Medway: the neighbour next door

Cross the administrative border into Medway and the same forces can be seen at work.

Medway ranks 84th out of 296 on the overall Education, Skills and Training deprivation measure, while 11.2% of its neighbourhoods fall within England’s most deprived tenth for the Children and Young People education sub-domain. It’s more educationally deprived on the broad measure than Ashford, Canterbury, Maidstone, Sevenoaks, Dartford, Tonbridge & Malling or Tunbridge Wells, but substantially less so than Swale and Thanet.

It also operates selection. Medway says its test is designed to assess as grammar-standard the equivalent of about 26% of children attending Medway maintained schools; for 2026 admissions, 25% of the cohort was assessed as grammar.

Then look inside its sixth forms.

Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School had 217 A-level students in the 2025 DfE figures, an average B+ and 27.6% reaching the AAB measure. Rainham Mark Grammar had 169 students, an average B- and 15.4%; Fort Pitt Grammar had 104, an average B- and 11.1%; Rainham School for Girls had 113, an average C+ and 4.9%. Again, schools operating within one council area produce markedly different outcomes.

Across Medway’s state-funded schools and colleges as a whole, 1,386 A-level students averaged C+ in 2025 and 13.3% reached the AAB measure, against 17.5% across state-funded schools and colleges in England.

Medway isn’t an afterthought to the Kent story.

It’s another version of it.

What the maths says — and what it doesn’t

There is still a measurable relationship between deprivation and Kent’s A-level table.

Taking the twelve KCC districts and comparing their 2025 Education, Skills and Training deprivation rank with the A*/A percentages in the 2026 council results produces a Spearman rank correlation of about +0.63. Because a higher deprivation rank means a district is less deprived, the direction is straightforward: broadly speaking, the less educationally deprived Kent districts tend to record higher proportions of A* and A grades.

That isn’t causation.

Twelve districts is a tiny sample. One dataset describes the social and educational characteristics of people living in neighbourhoods; another counts results associated with examination centres. Kent’s selective system moves pupils around. Independent schools alter the mix further. Subject choices differ. Cohort sizes differ. And, as Ofqual itself has repeatedly stressed when analysing differences in attainment, prior attainment, centre characteristics and socioeconomic factors overlap in complicated ways.

So +0.63 isn’t a magic number explaining Kent’s schools.

It’s a clue.

The clue says the two maps — top grades and educational deprivation — resemble one another sufficiently that the relationship deserves investigation. Gravesham and Dartford then tell us not to mistake resemblance for destiny.

The national evidence makes that warning even more important.

The gap begins before results day

In the Department for Education’s latest detailed 16-to-18 statistics, 22.7% of students in state-funded education were classed as disadvantaged. But disadvantaged young people were under-represented among those studying A-levels in the first place.

Among those who did take A-levels, the average-point-score gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students was 4.6 points in 2024/25. And there’s another number easily lost amid the grades: 93.5% of non-disadvantaged A-level students were retained and assessed, compared with 86.2% of disadvantaged students. Students who don’t reach the examination aren’t sitting in the final results table waiting to drag down an average.

That changes how we should read results day.

By the time the envelopes are opened and photographs of smiling teenagers appear, part of the inequality has already happened — in who entered A-level study, who stayed on the programme and who was ultimately assessed. The grades are the end of a journey, not its beginning.

Which brings us back to 2026.

Did the map change?

England has just recorded another strong A-level year. The share of English entries receiving A* or A edged up to 28.3%, while the South East reached 31.5%. London was higher still at 32.7%; the North East and East Midlands stood at 23.1%. The regional top-grade gap is now 9.6 percentage points, compared with 3.9 points between London’s 26.9% and the North East’s 23.0% in 2019.

So Kent’s divide isn’t happening in isolation.

But Kent adds something unusual to the national story: a highly selective school system sitting across some very different communities, from neighbourhoods among England’s most educationally deprived to districts among its least. The result is a geography in which deprivation matters, school location matters and access to different forms of education matters — while no one of those things, by itself, explains every result.

That is why Folkestone & Hythe matters rather more than its 18.5% figure suggests.

More than one in four of its neighbourhoods sit in England’s most deprived tenth for Children and Young People education. Its A-level centres produce markedly different results from one another. And its district-wide share of A* and A grades sits near the bottom of Kent’s 2026 table. Those aren’t three ways of saying the same thing. They’re three pieces of the same puzzle.

Kent’s A-level league table therefore tells us rather more than who came top.

It shows where top grades are concentrated.

The deprivation data show where educational disadvantage is concentrated.

The school figures show some of the institutions sitting between the two.

They aren’t the same thing.

But neither are they strangers.

When Ofqual adds 2026 to its geographical series, the important question won’t simply be whether another percentage has risen or fallen.

It’ll be whether the map changed.

Have a story that needs telling, or information you think may interest us? Please get in touch. All correspondence will be treated in the strictest confidence. TheShepwayVoxTeam@proton.me

The Shepway Vox Team

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