Widening attainment gap from 2022 ‘concern’ for Education Secretary

The widening attainment gap between the most and least deprived Higher pupils is of “concern” to Scotland’s Education Secretary, despite figures remaining below pre-pandemic levels.

Jenny Gilruth told the PA news agency that the gap between the least and most affluent pupils had not made as much progress as she would have liked – but said the issue is of “real focus” to the Scottish Government.

Exam results published on Tuesday showed the gap in attainment of A to C grades between the fifth most deprived and their least deprived peers stood at 16 percentage points for 2023.

However, it is below the last pre-pandemic levels in 2019, when an attainment gap of 16.9 percentage points was recorded.

For the attainment gap at National 5 level, there was a similar trend with the gap becoming smaller from last year while remaining narrower than the 2019 level.

The Education Secretary visited pupils receiving their results at Edinburgh’s Craigmount High School.

She said: “I think undoubtedly is it a concern for me. It’s a real focus for the government in relation to our work around closing the poverty-related attainment gap.

“We have made progress since 2019 but not as much as I would have liked to have done.”

She said the Scottish Government had invested record sums into the Scottish Attainment Challenge, which provides additional income to schools, and pupil equity funding.

But she added: “However, as we continue to recover from the pandemic there is more the government will need to do and local authorities in relation to closing that gap because the ongoing challenges of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis really can’t be ignored in that context.”

Meanwhile, the attainment gap at the Advanced Higher level has grown narrower than 2019.

This stood at 13.2 percentage points in 2019, remaining at 13.2 percentage points in 2022 before falling to 11.5 percentage points in 2023.

Ms Gilruth echoed the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) in urging caution in drawing conclusions between education performance since 2019 due to the different approaches of awarding exam results during the pandemic years.

The SQA modified course assessment and put an exam exceptional circumstances service in place, and took a sensitive approach to grading as schools recover from the Covid-19 impact and were hit by days of industrial action by teachers in the 2022/23 school year.

Ms Gilruth said: “Next year the qualifications requirement will mirror those that existed in 2019.

“However, I’m not necessarily sure you can really compare where we are now to what happened in 2019 because we’ve got a cohort of young people who lived through the pandemic and undoubtedly that had continued to impact their educational outcomes.

“We need to be mindful of that.”

The Conservatives pointed out that the attainment gap for A grades at Highers is at its widest level since 2017.

Education spokesman Liam Kerr said: “Pupils, teachers and parents deserve great credit for their hard work after a school year which has been impacted by the consequences of the SNP Government’s underfunding of councils and failure to show leadership over reforms.

“I’d like to congratulate all those who have achieved the grades they hoped for and to acknowledge the commitment that made that possible.

“But while pupils and teachers have done their bit, it is impossible to ignore the impact on Scotland’s education system of 16 years of SNP neglect.

“The widening attainment gap should be a source of shame for ministers – pupils from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have been let down year after year by the SNP.

“For a government that claims to be ‘progressive’, it represents an abject and shameful failure.”

Lib Dem education spokesman Willie Rennie said: “Every young person deserves our congratulations for their results and recognition for the effort in achieving them.

“I recall the great anticipation I felt at that age about what was to come next and planning for the future.

“Yet the yawning poverty-related attainment gap is a warning for the SNP Government which promised to close the gap, but instead the gap is as wide as ever.

“If the SNP worked as hard as young people, we may not have such a wide poverty-related attainment gap.”