Much has been made of the Scottish government’s failure to publish any version of the independent review of Curriculum for Excellence by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) before the Scottish Parliament election on 6 May.

The argument put forward by opposition politicians is that first minister Nicola Sturgeon said she wanted to be judged on her education record, but that there is a dearth of information on which the public can make that call. In the interests of full transparency, they insist, voters should see what the OECD has to say before they go to the polls.

This week, however, the landscape changed. Two new reports - one from the Scottish government, the other from Audit Scotland - were published and, between them, they give more than enough information on the education system to allow the public to gauge performance.

These reports show that overall progress in closing the gap since the government launched the Scottish Attainment Challenge back in 2015 has been minimal and, in some instances, has gone backwards. And that was before the pandemic.

The Scottish government - which has invested £750 million over the course of this Parliament (2016-2021) in the Attainment Challenge - is keen to point out that where the gap has widened, that is often not because pupils from the most deprived areas are doing worse but because pupils from the least deprived areas are getting better, faster.

Tackling the attainment gap in Scotland

Nevertheless, the Audit Scotland report is clear that progress on closing the gap has been “limited and falls short of the Scottish Government’s aims”. It says that “improvement needs to happen more quickly and there needs to be greater consistency across the country”.

Another key issue it raises is the “wide variation in education performance across councils”, with evidence of worsening performance on some indicators in some councils, including those that have received among the biggest shares of attainment challenge funding.

One such statistic is the huge variation between councils in pupils from the most and least deprived areas leaving school with five or more awards at level 5 (National 5 or equivalent).

In some councils, just 26.5 per cent of the most disadvantaged school-leavers achieved five awards at level 5 but, in other council areas, that figure was more than 70 per cent.

It is little wonder, then, that one of the report’s key recommendations is that councils should work with their partners “to reduce variability in outcomes”.

Another disparity is the amount of money that councils actually invest in education. Typically, councils spend around 28 per cent of their budgets on education but in the “Challenge authorities” - the nine authorities that have been targeted through the Attainment Challenge because of their high levels of deprivation - that varied from 20.2 per cent in Glasgow City to 33.8 per cent in North Lanarkshire. In non-Attainment Challenge councils, it varied from 18.8 per cent in Shetland to 40.1 per cent in East Renfrewshire.

However, the report also notes that “our analysis has not found a link between spending per pupil and educational attainment”.

Where does that all leave us? There are some positives: teacher numbers, for example, have been rising steadily, with the biggest leap made in 2020 following Scottish government funding for the Covid-19 response. Investment in pupil support assistants and business support staff has also increased substantially, from £519 million in 2013-14 to £604 million in 2018-19. And the report even finds some positives that schools can take from the Covid crisis, including the increased parental engagement in education brought about by remote learning.

However, the report is clear that the Scottish government needs to better define what it wants out of the Attainment Challenge by “being clear about anticipated outcomes and milestones”.

And, if it’s not just academic attainment that matters, then it needs to find ways to measure the wealth of the other things that schools do well.

This is going to become even more crucial as the country emerges from the coronavirus pandemic, given that schools will likely do an incredible job supporting their pupils. But without data on wider outcomes, such as wellbeing, they will never get the full credit they absolutely deserve.

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

This article originally appeared in the 26 March 2021 issue under the headline “Why is it proving so difficult to close the attainment gap?”