Only two or three Scottish schools inspected last year managed to attain the top rating from inspectors for key measures like learning, teaching and assessment and - the Scottish government’s top priority - raising attainment and achievement.  

Findings from school inspections carried out last year and published today show that primary, secondary and special schools were most likely to be rated weak or unsatisfactory for leadership of change, with 15 per cent rated weak and 2 per cent rated unsatisfactory.

The measure that saw the largest proportion of schools rated good or better was ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion. A total of 65 per cent of schools were deemed good or better for this measure; 25 per cent were rated satisfactory; and 10 per cent were rated weak or very weak.

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The Scottish government homes in on four inspection measures in a bid to track the performance of the education system via the National Improvement Framework.

The measures are leadership of change; learning, teaching and assessment; ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion; and raising attainment and achievement.

Very few schools were rated either very poorly or very highly for the four measures, with only a handful being deemed “unsatisfactory” or “excellent”.

The inspectors reported that the highest proportion of schools achieving an “excellent” rating for any of the key measures was 2 per cent.

No school was found to be unsatisfactory when it came to learning teaching and assessment or raising attainment and achievement but 2 per cent were found to be unsatisfactory when it came to leadership of change and 1 per cent were unsatisfactory when it came to ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion.   

Depending on the measure, a sample of either 122 or 252 schools was used.

Gayle Gorman, the head of inspection curriculum development body Education Scotland, said the results were being published to make educators aware of the strengths in the system, as well as what needed to be improved.

Education Scotland said positives it had picked up on during inspection included the “strong buy-in” in schools for raising attainment and addressing the attainment gap. The body also said there was evidence that collaboration and participation in career-long professional learning was resulting in positive outcomes in most schools; that confidence was increasing when it came to effective use of data; and pupils were being given more opportunities to express their views.

Areas for improvement, said inspectors, included achieving consistently high-quality learning and teaching; continuing to improve the reliability and validity of teachers’ judgements about how well pupils were progressing; improving the monitoring and tracking of children’s and young people’s progress, skills and attainment over time; and the teaching of equality and diversity.

The findings in full for each quality indicator were:

Leadership of change (sample 122 schools): 59 per cent of schools were rated good or better; 25 per cent were rated satisfactory; 17 per cent were rated weak or very weak

Learning, teaching and assessment (sample 252 schools): 61 per cent of schools were rated good or better; 31 per cent were rated satisfactory; 8 per cent were rated weak

Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion (sample 122 schools): 65 per cent of schools were rated good or better; 25 per cent were rated satisfactory; 10 per cent were rated weak or unsatisfactory

Raising attainment and achievement (sample 252 schools): 58 per cent of schools were rated good or better; 31 per cent were rated satisfactory; 10 per cent were rated weak