A-level results week sees repeat claims from both main parties

This week saw A-level results released across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and politicians from both sides of the House have repeated claims that we’ve looked at before. 

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Labour’s education secretary Bridget Phillipson stated: “We’ve seen big rises under the last government where it comes to child poverty.”

As we’ve explained in previous fact checks, there are different ways of measuring child poverty. While some measures show an increase since 2010, at least one measure—the number of children in absolute low income after housing costs—fell during the period of Conservative-led or Conservative government, from 3.7 million in 2009/10 to 3.6 million in 2022/23. 

Meanwhile, Full Fact’s AI tools alerted us to another claim we’d looked into previously. Conservative shadow minister Greg Smith wrote in the Daily Express: “Since 2010, the percentage of state-funded schools in England rated as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ by Ofsted has surged from 68% to 90%.”

This is similar to a claim made earlier this year by then schools minister Damian Hinds. When we looked at that we found that, although it is accurate for England, the way schools are inspected has changed, making direct comparisons between these time periods difficult.