Shameful attainment gap between rich and poor school students is wider than official figures claim

Closing the attainment gap between Scotland’s children growing up in the country’s most deprived neighbourhoods and their peers in the richest areas was Nicola Sturgeon’s defining mission. “It’s not something I’m going to say is ‘job done’ in a year or two years or probably even five years, but that’s the one that I’m going to measure myself against,” she told the New Statesman magazine in 2016 when she was arguably at the height of her power and influence.

We will have to wait for her memoirs, due to be published next August, to find out what she thinks about having failed miserably in the task she set herself. Meanwhile, a generation of young Scots are having to live with the consequences of her failure. The exam results published on Tuesday show that the attainment gap is growing ever wider. At Higher level, it is at a record high, standing at 17.2 per cent, up from 16 per cent last year and 14.9 per cent in 2022.

Jenny Gilruth, the Education Secretary and former teacher, did her best to remain upbeat, while getting her excuses on the record. “Today is a chance to celebrate the full breadth of achievements attained by Scotland’s young people,” she enthused, then added: “Scotland is not unique – and like countries the world over, our education system is still in recovery from the pandemic. Undoubtedly, that has contributed to some of the variability we have seen in results this year, particularly with the full return to qualifications requirements for the first time since the pandemic.”

She added that she was heartened by the record number of vocational or technical qualification awarded this year. These are in subjects as diverse as mental health and well-being, sport and computer games, so whether future employers are as enamoured of such certificates as the Education Secretary remains to be seen.

National 3 and 4 results not included

But is this the full story? Like most people, I have lazily accepted the headline measure used to compare achievement – comparing the pass rate of students who are presented for National 5s, Highers or Advanced Highers in the richest neighbourhoods with those who get similar results in the poorest areas. Put crudely, it’s a contest between the kids who do well, regardless of their background.

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But a series of social media posts by a senior teacher in the wake of Tuesday’s results got me thinking. Olivia Drennan, who has 17 years’ experience as a teacher, challenged the decision not to include the National 3 and 4 qualifications in the headline analysis of the attainment gap. She wrote: “To ignore these qualifications is to fail to look at the achievements of a vast number of young people. Proportionally they are more likely to come from deprived backgrounds and/or have ASN (additional support needs)”.

She went on to argue that any analysis of attainment that does not take account of National 3s and 4s gives a skewed picture, and pointed out that the increase in the pass rate at this level suggests more pupils than before are being presented for lower level qualifications. The dumbing down of our schools, in effect.

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“If we are going to analyse and try to understand what SQA results show us about Scottish education today, we can’t simply ignore over 150,000 entries for N4/3, making up over 30 per cent of National entries and representing the achievement of a vast number of kids,” she concluded.

Down the rabbit hole

My interest piqued, I attempted to find out exactly what lay beyond the headline measure for the attainment gap, only to fall down a rabbit hole of educational jargon and bureaucratic language that left me none the wiser.

There is apparently a “Framework for Recovery and Accelerating Progress” to support the “next phase of the Scottish Attainment Challenge”. Local councils have “stretch aims” as well as “additional (plus) aims” which are of equal importance to their “core aims”, and all share an ambition to encourage “the system” to “navigate the lasting impact of the pandemic and the current cost-of living-crisis, both of which have raised the barriers to learning created by poverty”.

A direct question to the Scottish Government about whether the National 3 and 4 results are taken into account when measuring the attainment gap and if not, why not, was met with a link to the same rabbit hole from which I had just emerged. There are 13 National Improvement Framework measures I was told, including data for literacy and numeracy and school attendance, yet the headline measure for the attainment gap remains the number of National 5 and Higher passes.

Hiding behind Freedom of Information

I thought I would try my luck with Edinburgh City Council, which had issued a news release boasting that the performance of pupils across Edinburgh was maintained or improved in most measures for National 5 and Higher courses when compared to 2023 and 2019. The very same document showed that more than half of Edinburgh students gained fewer than five National 5s.

“How many students were entered at only National 3 and 4 level?” I asked in attempt to get a picture of our Capital’s schools. “You will have to submit a Freedom of Information request to find that out,” I was told. Really?

What I have learned this week, thanks largely to the expertise of a teacher who has been through the upheaval of the Curriculum for Excellence and a few hours immersed in almost impenetrable education jargon, is that Scotland’s attainment gap is likely much wider and deeper than the headlines suggest. By burying the data on children who are less successful at passing exams, the people in charge of Scotland’s education system are not only failing them, they are letting down our country.