Hetton Academy results for white working-class pupils, Digi Mart USA News (Hetton-le-Hole, Sunderland, England): Two years ago, a reporter stood in a school hall in Sunderland on GCSE results day and watched the pride and surprise on the faces of teenagers as their envelopes were opened. Even after years of covering results days, the reporter was moved by outstanding results from a school facing so many challenges.
Almost half of the school’s pupils receive free school meals, meaning their parents are on low incomes. The results in the former mining town of Hetton-le-Hole were, in fact, as strong as those in the most affluent parts of southern England.
This summer, Hetton Academy reached another milestone, with 80% of its pupils achieving at least a grade 4 in maths and English. A grade 4 is roughly equivalent to a ‘C’ under the old system and is seen as a passport to jobs and further education.
Almost all of the school’s pupils come from a white, working-class background, a group that has been in the spotlight for some time. This week saw the launch of the second phase of an independent inquiry, led by former Cabinet minister Baroness Morris, into why children from those communities lag behind their peers at school.
Education Secretary Lucy Powell said: “Right now, too many white, working-class children are falling behind at every stage of their education.”
Hetton Academy appears to have defied the odds. Its principal, Vicky Pinkney, refuses to accept that low incomes should mean low results.
“I don’t think we should be accepting less just because of the community you work in,” she says.
The results have earned Hetton a place among an elite group of schools: mainstream secondaries that do not select pupils academically and where 80% of pupils achieve grade 4 or above in maths and English. Only 339 non-selective schools in England hit an average 80% pass rate in maths and English over the three years to 2025, out of around 3,000 that published the relevant data.
Some of these schools’ success comes from factors that are difficult to change. The economic profile of pupils clearly matters: schools hitting the 80% average have fewer children from the lowest-income families than average, are less likely to be in deprived areas, and have fewer children with special educational needs.
Analysts say family finances play a huge role in determining a school’s outcome.
Prof John Jerrim, an academic at University College London, says England’s system is failing poorer pupils. Since 2010, even as an overhaul of GCSEs has been widely seen as raising standards, the likelihood of children from the poorest families passing these key exams has barely changed.
“It’s really hard to move the dial,” he says.
Seamus Murphy, CEO of Turner Schools, which runs schools in financially deprived areas, believes the push for higher academic standards under Michael Gove from 2010 instilled “vision and challenge” into the system, but says it does not work for all pupils. In places where families struggle with the cost of living, he says, an 18-year-old earning the minimum wage was “a big deal”, and some parents may be tempted to push their children towards work rather than education.
The high-performing schools on the list also have a lower proportion of pupils from a White British background than other schools. Earlier this year, Baroness Morris’s inquiry found that many white, working-class families have lost faith in the school system and increasingly believe it does not guarantee future success.
Some schools nonetheless seem able to defy these demographic factors. Hetton stands out as an exception: it has a mostly white, working-class population and many pupils from poor families.
Looking only at the very highest grades, the region in which Hetton sits came bottom of the English league table this year, with just 3% of GCSEs in the North East awarded the top grade 9, versus 8% in London, according to exam watchdog Ofqual. On other measures of GCSE performance, the North East ranked more favourably.
The school opened in the 1960s as Hetton School and struggled for years with low performance. Hetton-le-Hole was hit hard by the closure of the Eppleton mine in the 1980s, and many families sent their children elsewhere for a good education.
An Ofsted report in 2021 rated the school as “requires improvement”, the last report before it became an academy. By 2024, Ofsted said it was “rapidly improving”.
This year’s 80% pass rate ranks the school high within Sunderland local authority and well above the England average, where 57% passed maths and 60% passed English.
Pinkney says the school is now the “school of choice” for local families. It aims to maintain a warm, welcoming ethos.
Year 11 pupils use a separate entrance path, lined each morning by teachers who quiz some of them about their subject, with problem solving done on the spot using a whiteboard. The decision on who to stop is discussed at regular review meetings.
Everyone receives more structured support in the form of an hour of extra study four days a week after school, and pupils struggling with maths may attend two of these hours on that subject. In the run-up to exams, the school holds “Revision Sundays”, when Year 11 pupils come in for a top-up session and share a roast lunch.
The aim is to foster a feeling of inclusion in the classroom, which the school believes can boost exam grades. When reviewing the school in 2024, Ofsted praised the “positive relationships” between pupils and staff.
A government-commissioned study published this year by the University of Cambridge found that pupils who say they “belong” in school see “significantly higher attainment” in their GCSEs.
Each year, parents of Year 11 pupils receive an invitation to a ‘Fish and Tips’ evening, where they get advice on supporting learning at home and a bag of revision resources, with booklets and stationery tailored to each pupil. Afterwards, Pinkney and staff share fish and chips in the canteen, paid for by the school.
Pinkney says parents see her as “just another Mam” who wants their children to do their best. Some parents may have had a poor experience of school or been able to get into work without many qualifications themselves.
Pinkney says the community mostly “stays in the area” and that it is the school’s task to “open their horizons”. Challenges remain, and it will not be easy for every school in a white, working-class area to emulate Hetton’s success.
Prof Lindsey Macmillan, an expert in how education shapes life chances, was involved in the recent inquiry. Pupils start school already behind, she says, and that gap widens through secondary school as disengagement with education grows.
The inquiry found evidence that the connection with school “falls off a cliff” for white working-class families at the move to secondary school, leading to poor attendance. Parents told the inquiry they did not need qualifications to get into work.
Macmillan says formal qualifications are now more important for getting a job than in previous decades, when there were more routes into well-paid industrial work and more on-the-job training.
Prof Jerrim believes schools should get families on board by clearly explaining how qualifications can help children find work. The inquiry also reported that white working-class parents often do not want their children to leave their area, which has a strong sense of connection.
England’s education system was described as out of step with the values of these communities. Parents there are ambitious for their children but often prioritise happiness and life-readiness alongside or above high grades.
Macmillan also says high grades should not be seen as the only route to a successful adult life, adding that suggesting otherwise can sound “demeaning” to parents who did not achieve high grades themselves. “Why have we created a structure where getting those maths and English GCSEs is so important to your life chances?” she asks.
She wants the government to consider more entry-level apprenticeships and other on-the-job learning so children with lower academic grades can still thrive.
Back in Sunderland, the 700 or so pupils at Hetton Academy have just returned to school after half-term. Pinkney believes other places could replicate its success.
She points out that she was also raised by a single mother with little money and still thrived academically. “I feel really strongly about that.
My school helped me to be able to achieve.”
