There has been some good news for Scottish education in recent months. Ahead of the Scottish Parliament election this month, an English think tank, the Education Policy Institute (EPI), took the time to compare investment in education across the four UK home nations - given that education was one of the key areas devolved in 1999 - and found that Scotland spends more per pupil (and by some distance) than England, Wales or Northern Ireland.  

What is less clear, though, is whether or not we are getting the bang for our buck, so to speak, as one of the few comparable data sets when it comes to attainment - the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) - suggests that Scottish 15-year-olds are not performing as well as those in England. 

Still, Pisa results that are now roughly three years out of date (the next Pisa assessment was due to take place this year but has been delayed until 2022) aren’t a lot to go on, especially given the narrow focus on teenagers.

However, a new prosperity index by London-based think tank Legatum Institute finds that the Scottish education system is the weakest performing in the UK - and this time, the report is not solely based on Pisa data.

The new index attempts to look at life in different parts of the UK in the round, comparing education outcomes as well as health, safety and security, infrastructure, the economy and the natural environment. 

According to Legatum, performance in education is based on “enrolment, outcomes and quality across four stages of education (pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary education), as well as the skills in the adult population”.

The UK is divided into 15 “regions”: 12 different parts of England and the three other countries of the UK - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

When it comes to education, Scotland is languishing at the bottom of the table, in 15th place; London is at the top; and Wales and Northern Ireland feature in the top five.

According to the index, the proportion of primary students in Scotland achieving the expected standard of literacy when leaving school is six percentage points below the UK average, at 71 per cent.

The index also drills down further and compares the education performance of 379 local authorities across the UK, including the 32 in Scotland. 

East Renfrewshire is “the most prosperous local authority in Scotland”, it concludes. The authority is ranked 41st overall for prosperity and 14th for education. It is the only Scottish council in the top 20 when it comes to education. Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, 10 Scottish councils find themselves in the bottom 20, with Clackmannanshire being the worst-performing council in the UK for education, according to the chart, ranked 379th.

Of course, as with school league tables, rankings like these are good at disguising the fact that some of the authorities languishing near the bottom are actually considered to be doing a good job and have been singled out for praise.

Take Glasgow. It is ranked 372 but, last year, London’s Evening Standard newspaper - not usually particularly interested in goings on north of Watford - ran a series of articles looking at how Glasgow had driven down exclusions. One headline read: “Radical vision that kept troubled children in school - and cut crime”. That doesn’t sound like an authority that is failing its young people.

Still, that 71 per cent figure comes from Scotland’s own statistics. In 2018-19, according to the Scottish government’s Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels data, 71 per cent of P7 pupils hit the expected literacy level for their age and stage. The figure for numeracy was 76 per cent.

So, what to do? As with school league tables, charts and rankings tend to oversimplify a highly complex landscape.

We need to measure what we value, collect robust data and aim to make steady gains on what we collectively agree matters most. If that results in Scotland rising up the rankings - be it this chart or Pisa - that’s an added bonus.

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

This article originally appeared in the 21 May 2021 issue under the headline “Scottish education takes a beating in UK chart but rankings aren’t whole story”