post-dates them by many centuries. The next universities built in the North were part of the wave of redbrick universities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, there are seven Northern institutions in the Russell Group of leading research universities: Durham, the redbricks of Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield and the later plate glass university of York. These universities, together with plate-glass Lancaster, form the N8 Research Partnership. There is a significant attainment gap between Northern and Southern schools, and pupils in the three Northern regions are less likely than the national average to achieve five higher-tier GCSEs, although this may be down to economic disadvantages faced by Northern pupils rather than an actual difference in school quality. Northern students are under-represented at Oxbridge, where three times as many places go to Southerners as to Northerners, and other Southern universities while Southerners are under-represented at leading Northern universities such as Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. Due to the educational attainment and university admission disparities between north and south, there are calls for the government to invest in education in disadvantaged parts of Northern England to redress this. Economy Like the UK as a whole, the Northern English economy is now dominated by the service sector – in September 2016, 82.2% of workers in the Northern statistical regions were employed in services, compared to 83.7% for the UK as a whole. Manufacturing now employs 9.5%, compared to the national average of 7.6%. The unemployment rate in Northern England is 5.3% compared to an England-wide and UK-wide average of 4.8%, and the North East has the highest unemployment rate in the UK, at 7.0% in December 2016, more than one percentage point higher than any other region. In 2015, the gross value added (GVA) of the Northern English economy was £316 billion, and if it were an independent nation, it would be the tenth largest economy in Europe. The region does have poor growth and productivity rates compared to Southern England and to other EU countries. Growth, employment and household income have lagged behind the South, and the five most deprived districts in England are all in Northern England, as are ten of the twelve most declining major towns in the UK. The picture is not clear-cut, as the North has areas which are as wealthy as, if not wealthier than, fashionable Southern areas such as Surrey. Yorkshire's Golden Triangle