Education Secretary will not set ‘arbitrary’ date for closing attainment gap

The Education Secretary has refused to give an “arbitrary” date for closing the country’s poverty-related attainment gap.

Shirley-Anne Somerville gave evidence on the Scottish Attainment Challenge to the Education, Children and Young People Committee at Holyrood on Wednesday.

The challenge picked nine local authorities with a high density of the poorest neighbourhoods and offered schools extra funding to address the issue – but plans to widen the challenge to all 32 councils have drawn criticism because the budget has only increased by a small amount.

When asked by convener Stephen Kerr if it is still the Scottish Government’s aim to close the attainment gap between the richest and poorest pupils – something First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has previously identified as her top priority – Ms Somerville simply said: “Yes.”

But the Education Secretary would not give a date for the successful closure of the gap.

“I’m not going to set an arbitrary date on when the attainment gap will be closed, particularly so close to the experiences that we are still having with the pandemic,” she said.

“We know that the pandemic has had an impact on attainment.”

She touted the introduction of so-called stretch aims – where councils set annual targets to improve the health and wellbeing of youngsters, as well as how they will close their own attainment gaps.

“What we very much intend to do through the stretch aims and through working with local authorities is for local authorities to be able to determine what can be done in their area and what support is required from our national agencies to be able to support them to do so,” she said.

Ms Somerville went on to say she would prefer to not have a “top down” approach to closing the attainment gap, adding: “I prefer to work with local government.

“Of course our ambition is no less than to close the attainment gap, but we do need to recognise that is a long-term endeavour.”

When asked what she considered to be “long term”, the Education Secretary added: “We are determined to see greater pace of progress than we were before the pandemic and that’s what the stretch aims are an important part of.”

Stretch aims are due to be set by local authorities by September.