A more meaningful ‘international’ comparison as 20% more Scottish 16-year-olds gain qualifications in SNP Scotland than those in Tory England do

A picture containing text, newspaper, indoor, woman Description automatically generated
‘OK, let’s imagine these tubes are Times journalists.’

The Times headline above, from December 3rd 2019, was typical of the repeated attempts in the run-up to the General Election, to blame the SNP for imagined weaknesses in Scottish education.

Leaving aside the obvious fact that no credible academic uses Pisa scores to say anything at all, readers should have ready this evidence for the next time they meet someone taken in by the media narrative:

Only 66.9% of English 16-year-olds gained 1 or more GCSE awards in 2018 while 86.% of Scots 16-year-olds gained 1 or more of the equivalent SQA Level 5 awards.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-45282518

Click to access children-education-skills-summary-statistics-attainment-leaver-destinations-healthy-living-no-8-2018-edition.pdf

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.