So, the Scottish education system is the best funded of the UK home nations. It also has the lowest pupil-teacher ratio and the highest starting salary for teachers.

These were some of the key findings of a report published at the tail end of last week by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) think tank, comparing education systems in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and how they have diverged since devolution in 1999. It’s a timely comparison to make given that, yesterday, voters in Scotland and Wales went to the polls to decide on the composition of their next parliaments.

The report found plenty of differences between the systems which, when it comes to spending, are certainly not negligible. At one end of the scale, it showed that Northern Ireland invests £5,800 per pupil and, at the other end, Scotland was investing £7,300. England and Wales were both found to have spent £6,100 per pupil in 2019-20. The EPI report also found that Scotland was the only UK country where - over the course of the past decade - spending cuts had been “more than reversed”, with a net increase in education spending of 5 per cent since 2009-10.

Doubtless, though, many Scottish teachers and headteachers will look around at their places of work and not feel like they are topping any sort of rich list - so, why is that?

One possible explanation is that most of the extra funding has been used to deliver higher levels of teacher pay in Scotland - teachers, councils and government are struggling to hammer out a deal this year but, over the past three years (2018-20), Scottish teachers have received rises amounting to 13.51 per cent. Scottish schools also have less control over education budgets. While in England, more than 90 per cent of education funding is devolved to schools, in Scotland, that figure is 66 per cent, the report finds.

And - while we might have the most generous funding, and our headteachers are less likely to report that they lack educational resources or physical infrastructure - the data shows that Scottish schools were the most likely to struggle to recruit staff. Almost half of Scottish headteachers (47 per cent) reported that they were hindered by a lack of teaching staff, as compared with 36 per cent of headteachers in England. The proportion of heads believing a lack of teaching assistants is a problem was also highest in Scotland, at 39 per cent.

The EPI report suggests that - given these figures are based on pooled data from Pisa (the Programme for International Student Assessment) 2015 and 2018 - the higher salaries introduced for Scottish teachers might be having an impact on recruitment by now by making the job more attractive.

Indeed, in terms of the boom-and-bust cycle of teacher numbers, we do appear to be entering a period of boom, which is good news for schools but less so for those tempted into the profession by promises of a rewarding career and who, instead, find themselves languishing on temporary contracts or supply lists.

Unfortunately, despite this higher investment in education, Scotland lags behind England, by some key measures, in the only set of consistent attainment data across the four nations that in any way pierces the public or political consciousness: Pisa.

Comparisons across the UK - whether from Pisa, the EPI or anyone else - are interesting, but are they useful? Philosophically, it often feels as if the English and Scottish education systems are poles apart but, overall, neither approach seems to be the envy of the world.

Even if we could figure out what bit of English education policy was leading to that edge in Pisa, would Scotland want to adopt it? More useful comparisons could be made with education systems that Scotland might actually want to emulate. But Pisa, with its limited focus on one age group (15-year-olds) and a small part of the curriculum (science, maths and reading), is not enough to provide those.

Re-engaging with other international education surveys, such as Trends in International Maths and Science Study (Timss) and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) - which Scotland withdrew from quite a number of years ago - would give us a more rounded picture of the strengths and weaknesses of our own system, and the chance to learn from the outstanding education practice around the world.

Emma Seith is a reporter for Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith

This article originally appeared in the 7 May 2021 issue under the headline “Scottish schools top UK ‘rich list’ - but it doesn’t feel like that on the ground”