Why widening gap between exam results of rich and poor pupils should shame Swinney and Sturgeon

One of the issues with any political party being in government over a long period is that, sooner or later, promises they make have to be delivered, or their failures become evident. That was the case for my own party after 14 years in power at Westminster, with many people asking themselves whether or not their lives were better compared to where they had been in 2010 before voting in last summer’s general election..

Despite the mitigating circumstances of the Covid pandemic and the Ukraine War’s effect on the cost of living, for too many the answer simply was that their lot hadn’t improved over the previous decade and a half, and it was time to vote for change.

As with the Conservative party at Westminster, the SNP at Holyrood are now finding themselves in a similar position. Promises made more than a decade ago are now being assessed on delivery. And just as there has been a woeful lack of progress on the promises to dual the A9 by 2025 or deliver superfast broadband to every property by 2021, when it comes to education, we see SNP failures exposed.

John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon promised to cut the educational attainment gap between rich and poor. Instead, it has got bigger (Picture: Andy Buchanan) | AFP via Getty Images

SNP’s pathetic results

Back in 2016, the then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stated that her government’s priority would be education. The long-running issue of the attainment gap, where children from better-off families have substantially better outcomes than those from poorer ones, had to be addressed. And so Sturgeon promised the attainment gap would be eliminated, or at least substantially eliminated, by 2026.

Her Education Secretary at the time, tasked with delivering on this outcome, was none other than John Swinney, the present First Minister. Various initiatives, including pupil equity funding, were launched to attempt to deliver on this objective.

We saw last week how successful this policy has been. The results are pathetic. Compared to last year, the attainment gap widened at SCQF levels 4 to 6, but that one statistic only tells part of the problem. The attainment gap at level 4 is the widest it has been since 2012, whilst at levels 5 and 6, it is wider than it has been since 2016.

Around 20 per cent of pupils leave school without reaching SCQF level 5 in literacy, whilst a third fail to meet the same standard in numeracy. In simple terms, far too many children are being failed by the current system, particularly those from the most deprived backgrounds.

Questionable way of judging education

Now it is certainly arguable whether closing the attainment gap is in itself the best indication of an improvement in educational standards. The attainment gap can be narrowed in two ways: either by pulling up those at the bottom, or by hauling down those at the top.

A school system which delivered mediocrity across the board, where the best and brightest were held back, would have a lower attainment gap than one where everyone performed well, with the highest achieving allowed to shine.

But we have to judge the SNP on the promises they made and, on their own measure of pledging to eliminate the attainment gap by 2026, they have utterly failed.

Last week also saw a damning report from Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland, on support for pupils with additional support needs. This revealed that since legislation was passed to make additional support for learning more inclusive in 2004, there has been a staggering eightfold increase in the number of pupils recorded as receiving ASN help.

Currently 40 per cent of pupils receive additional support for learning, and in some schools the percentage is much higher. Unsurprisingly, this puts a huge burden on teachers, as almost all of this support is now delivered in mainstream classrooms.

Deeply worrying picture

Yet, as the Auditor General pointed out in his report, the Scottish Government has failed to plan effectively for its inclusive approach to additional support for learning. Boyle states that both the Scottish Government and councils urgently need better information to understand pupils’ needs, and provide the appropriate level of resource to support them.

Just as with the attainment gap, there is a wide gap in outcomes for pupils receiving additional support compared with other pupils, including being more likely to be absent or excluded from school.

It all points to a deeply worrying picture in terms of what’s happening in our schools. There is now overwhelming evidence that neither the current First Minister nor anybody else in the SNP administration has any ideas as to what can be done to try and improve matters.

It is deeply depressing as a parent to see the performance of schools south of the Border soaring ahead of those in Scotland, mainly thanks to reforms introduced first by the Blair government, and then by the Conservatives under Michael Gove and subsequent Education Secretaries. In Scotland, there has been no significant reform, and today we are living with the consequences of that inaction.

Sturgeon and Swinney’s legacy

So what might be done? There are clearly issues with the Curriculum for Excellence, or at least the manner in which it is being delivered, where the shift away from knowledge to skills has left too many young people without a grasp of basic facts and concepts.

There are huge ongoing issues with behaviour and indiscipline in schools, where heads and teachers simply lack the tools to help them tackle the problem, not least because of the presumption against exclusion for even the most badly behaving pupils.

Moreover, the presumption of mainstreaming pupils with additional support needs means that they are not receiving the dedicated educational support that many of them require, while non-ASN pupils are held back because teachers do not have enough time to focus on them.

Nicola Sturgeon and now John Swinney have been judged on their promises on closing the attainment gap, and both have failed. Their legacy is a generation of young people who have been badly let down as a result of their failings.

Murdo Fraser is Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife