Progress in closing the “poverty-related attainment gap” is “not where it should be”, education secretary Jenny Gilruth admitted today, giving evidence to a Holyrood committee almost 10 years on from the launch of the Scottish Attainment Challenge.
The admission came after a protracted debate between Ms Gilruth and Douglas Ross, former leader of the Scottish Conservatives and current convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee.
However, as much as Mr Ross was determined for Ms Gilruth to admit failure on commitments made in the 2016-17 programme for government - to “substantially eliminate” the gap over the next decade - the education secretary was determined to set things in context.
Even Mr Ross, she quipped, could not have predicted a global pandemic in 2016 that led to “two years out of formal schooling”. Then there had been austerity and the cost-of-living crisis, which had “compounded poverty for many families”.
Impact of the Scottish Attainment Challenge
The upshot, Ms Gilruth argued, was that interventions funded by the Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC) and the associated Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) had shifted focus from being “direct educational interventions” to “welfare interventions”, including “funding things like income-maximisation officers”.
She said: “PEF is now being used by headteachers to plug gaps, bluntly, that the welfare state should be providing for.”
Later Ms Gilruth added: “The power of PEF and SAC in its totality has been eroded by the implication of policies from elsewhere, and that’s harming the impact that funding should be having. That being said, that funding is making a real difference.”
David Gregory, Education Scotland’s strategic director for the Scottish Attainment Challenge, painted a vivid picture of the challenge that schools are facing.
During a school inspection, he had seen a child take off their jacket and a cockroach fell out, he said. Even having a bed to sleep in was not a given for some pupils, he added: he was aware of two children “sleeping in a cupboard on top of a shelf”.
Some schools, said David Leng, head of SAC for the Scottish government, were making deals with supermarket chains to secure clothing and food, and providing showers, so that if children “weren’t clean, they would look after them”.
Pam Duncan-Glancy, Labour’s education spokesperson, questioned if core school funding was adequate, and independent MSP John Mason pointed out that PEF money had fallen by 16 per cent in real terms since 2017.
Ms Gilruth said councils had received “record funding”, with extra money for teachers and for additional support needs staff. The Scottish government’s spending on education outstripped other parts of the UK, she added.
However, Willie Rennie, the Liberal Democrats’ education spokesperson, said that the vast majority of progress in closing the gap took place before the SAC got underway.
He also took Ms Gilruth to task for “overstating” progress in terms literacy and numeracy attainment in primary and S3. The government was talking about “record levels of improvement” when there had only been small changes in the data.
“If you look at primary literacy levels, the gap was in the low 20s when we first started. It’s in the low 20s now. If you look at numeracy, it was in the high teens. It’s still in the high teens,” Mr Rennie said.
He suggested the government was “nowhere near to closing the poverty-related attainment gap, or even substantially closing it”, and that progress was “broadly flatlining”.
‘Game-changing’ targets
However, Ms Gilruth and her officials said the introduction of “stretch aims” - ambitious targets set for councils to improve, for example, attainment and attendance - had been “a game changer”
Dr Gregory said conversations with schools and councils were now “much more rigorous” and data-driven, where discussion had previously been “quite vague”.
If councils delivered their stretch aims, the gap would close by 30 per cent by the end of the parliamentary term in 2026, said Ms Gilruth, adding: “Most local authorities are on track to achieve or exceed their stretch aims.”
She said the SAC had “fundamentally changed” the way schools work. There had been a “mindset shift” that meant more young people were being supported to achieve and to enter a positive destination after school.
She also suggested that the measures of attainment used by the government to track progress in closing the gap were “out of date”.
There are plans to move from looking at just attainment in national qualifications - such as National 5s, Highers and Advanced Highers - to attainment across the full range of qualifications offered in schools, in response to the growth of, for example, National Progression Awards.
This will tell “the full story” of young people’s achievements, Ms Gilruth said.
For the latest in Scottish education delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for Tes’ The Week in Scotland newsletter
