In the Herald this evening:
‘The NUMBER of pupils leaving schools in Scotland with at least one national qualification has declined, new figures have revealed.’
The actual figures:
- 95.9% of school leavers gained one pass or more at SCQF Level 4 (e.g. National 4) or better, (a decrease from 96.2% in 2017-18);
- the proportion of school leavers attaining one pass or more at SCQF Level 5 (e.g. National 5) or better decreased from 85.9% in 2017-18 to 85.1% in 2018-19
https://www.gov.scot/news/school-leaver-attainment-and-destinations-3/
You’ll see that these one-year change figures, for the levels at which the vast majority of pupils get qualifications, are tiny – 0.3 to 0.8%. One year changes do not a trend make and changes this small are not significant in any way whatsoever.
There were reductions, again one-year, of between 1.7% and 2.1% at Higher and Advanced Higher level but these affected a much smaller group of pupils who cannot be equated with the mass of leavers, at levels 4 and 5, implied in the headline.
Further, for context, only 63% of pupils in England leave with any ‘proper’ qualifications.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
I don’t have time to delve into this now but others may be interested in taking a look. The data tables associated with this new SG report on attainment and destinations for school leaders provide a fascinating time series back to 2009/10.
These can be found at ‘supporting files’ on this page: https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-attainment-initial-leaver-destinations-no-2-2020-edition/
Candidly, from these data it would be a ‘trivial’ task to demonstrate positive changes in trends over the past 10 years: it would also be ‘trivial’ to calculate the extent of yearly variability in the data over the decade and thus the (lack) of statistical significance of changes over just a two year period – should a journalist actually wish to provide context and to make a serious contribution to informing constructive public debate.
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I noticed that the Herald has not opened the Comments section on this article about Attainment. That is very telling
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Couple of Scot Gov articles that will be of interest –
https://blogs.gov.scot/education/2020/02/24/five-years-on-with-the-scottish-attainment-challenge-sac-funding-and-what-has-changed/
https://blogs.gov.scot/education/2020/02/25/rising-to-the-challenge-of-educational-equity-how-is-scotland-doing/
Not much actual data, but good positive indications.
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