evidence: This short report argues that low education outcomes, high levels of inequality and their consequences for children’s life chances represent a major challenge for the new First Minister of Wales. Improving this situation should be an urgent priority for his new government. [...] The gaps in performance between the most and least disadvantaged groups are broadly similar across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and are perhaps a little larger for Scotland in reading and maths. However, the difference in levels between England and other nations of the UK by level of disadvantage is very stark. For the least disadvantaged group, we see that scores in England are about 25–30 PISA points higher than in the other nations of the UK, on average. Some of this is likely to be explained by higher incomes at the top end of the spectrum in England. However, it is notable that scores for the least disadvantaged 25% of children in Wales are only barely above the average for all children in England. [...] To be clear, the overall level of the disadvantage gap and educational inequalities in England are substantial, with a national disadvantage gap of 18 months before the pandemic and much evidence to suggest that this has been getting even worse over recent years (Babbini et al., 2023). But the picture in Wales looks even worse than this. This greater disadvantage gap cannot be explained by higher levels of disadvantage in Wales. Areas of England with similar or higher levels of disadvantage manage to achieve lower levels of educational inequality. The explanation must lie elsewhere.