Exam results over the past four years show that inner-city children are falling further behind pupils from more affluent areas.

Scrutiny of the Government’s league tables reveals that significant numbers of inner-city education authorities have an increasing proportion of fifth-formers leaving without any qualifications. There are 13 local authorities in the North and Midlands where a growing proportion of 15-year-olds failed to achieve even a grade G at GCSE.

In addition, the research, based on data prepared by Leeds University school of geography, identifies three authorities - Doncaster, Walsall and Croydon - where results have got worse judged by the share of pupils getting higher-grade GCSEs and the proportion leaving without a grade G.

The greatest rate of improvement in results is in areas such as the shire counties and North Yorkshire. In the latter the proportion of pupils getting higher-grade GCSEs is up from 34.9 to 50.2 per cent.

However, the picture is not uniform. In the main, LEAs in less well-off areas are not showing improvements in line with the national average of five higher grade GCSEs. In some the proportion leaving without qualifications is increasing.

In Newcastle-upon-Tyne the proportion leaving without anything has gone up from 14 per cent to 17.3 per cent. The figures for Salford show an increase from 11.2 per cent to 16; in Wolverhampton from 10.2 per cent to 12.8 per cent.

Top of the league for unqualified school-leavers is Manchester. A total of 19.1 per cent of fifth-formers leave with nothing to show for 11 years of schooling though this is an improvement on the city’s 1992 figure of 23 per cent.

However, a few authorities have dramatically improved their results. The London borough of Lambeth, which has four failing schools (and has closed a fifth), has pushed up its proportion of fifth-formers getting five A to Cs from 18.2 per cent to 32.2 per cent. It has also nearly halved the proportion of pupils leaving with no qualifications.

In the South-east, Barking and Dagenham has increased its proportion of pupils gaining higher-grade GCSEs from 15.5 per cent to 27.6 per cent. Northumberland has seen an increase from 27.9 per cent to 42.8 per cent.

The London borough of Islington has the distinction of being the only local authority where fewer pupils leave with nothing, but fewer are attaining five or more higher-grade GCSEs.

Of those areas where a greater proportion of pupils are leaving without any GCSEs, only Wolverhampton, Gateshead and Nottingham show an improvement on their higher-grade results that outstrips the national rate.

The reasons given for these worsening results vary. Alf Taylor, director of education in Doncaster, pointed out that the authority was doing more for pupils with special needs and was taking more children from outside the authority.

“That increase does not totally explain our results. We know we have to raise expectations and increase the numbers getting higher grades at GCSE,” he says.

Croydon has already set up a programme designed to ensure better results and the director, Paul Benians, has ordered a detailed study of every child who did not achieve five grades A to G in 1995.

“The upward trend since 1991 has come to a halt. Some schools have continued to show significant improvement; some results have remained steady and four schools have shown a decline,” he says.

In the troubled Labour-controlled Walsall, where senior officers are being made redundant, the co-ordinator for education services, Mike Quinn, says the results may be down to declining performance in their top schools.

In addition, there is evidence of a widening gap between high and low performing schools in a parliamentary answer to David Blunkett, Labour’s education spokesman. It shows that the top 25 per cent of schools are improving at a faster rate than the bottom 25 per cent.