I’ve been mulling this one over for some time, as you can see from the above.
Prof Lindsay Paterson, a mere statistician with no meaningful experience in school-level education in Scotland, but the regular Union ‘rentagob‘ to talk it down for English audiences, has latched onto the simple figures on ‘international comparison’ and ‘education inequality’ as his selling points to attract MSM editors.
Both are meaningless.
Critics, especially opposition politicians on the make and academics keen to impress them, rather than struggle with the more difficult task of impressing their peers with deeper understanding of how learning takes place, have picked opportunistically at the enormous array of attainment statistics now easily available to all of us.
A popular line, based on selective, misunderstood or dated evidence, is that Scottish schools are less successful than they used to be. Often the Pisa results are wheeled out as evidence of decline. Credible academics, other than those attention seekers mentioned above, are largely contemptuous of this extremely narrow set of data and its use to compare education in culturally and economically distinct societies.
For example, the East Asian systems, in South Korea and Shanghai/China, successful in Pisa, are based on gruelling programmes with 13-hour days and only 5.5 hours sleeping time. Social time is not mentioned at all. Professor Zhao of Oregon University has described them as:
‘Glorifying educational authoritarianism and romanticising misery.’[ii]
In 2014, the New York Times described South Korea’s system as ‘an assault on children’ and suggested that South Korea:
‘..produces ranks of over-achieving students who pay a stiff price in health and happiness. The entire programme amounts to child abuse.’[iii]
Pupil suicide rates are high in East Asia and low in the UK.[iv]
The successful, in Pisa terms, East Asian systems have also been accused of failing to develop the creativity, originality and innovation, industry requires and of leaving ‘special’ children to languish and fail.
In Scotland, there is a different culture and one the SNP in government shares with me and with, I feel sure, most Scots.
A clear piece of evidence lies in the progress toward narrowing the attainment gap at the end of Secondary education.
Critics can be found in much of the media shouting about our supposed failure to sufficiently narrow the gap between the most and the least deprived.
At SCQF level 7, the gap in 2009/10, two years after the SNP first came to power, was 24.1 and by 2021/22 it was still 22.2, though down from 25 in the previous year. If you have limited understating of statistics or cynically only wish to accuse the SNP Government of failure, these statistics hide the true nature of change.
In 2009/10 only 4.7% of those in the most disadvantaged 20% had achieved at this level but by 2021/22, the figure was 10.3%, more than doubling in only 12 years. Remember also, that 20% means nearly 3 000 pupils every year.
Over the same period 28.8% of those in the most advantaged 20% had achieved at this level and by 2021/22, the figure was 38.8%, a smaller in percentage but larger in actual numbers, increase.[v]
So, despite the major improvement among those from the most deprived 20%, there had also been a significant improvement among the least deprived 20%. So, the gap had only narrowed slightly, after widening in the previous year, and two successes, one in a priority area for government, the gap widened in 2020/21 and then only narrowed in 2021/22, is then reported as failure.
We could, of course easily narrow the gap by simply denying access to Level 7 for many of those in the least disadvantaged 20%. That’s exactly the kind of social engineering they did in Albania for much of the second half of the 20th Century and in Communist China during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s.
The attainment gap is a largely artificial and mostly political idea with no meaning for those it describes. What really matters is the massive improvement in the life chances of those in the most disadvantaged 20%. It’s not enough, of course, but this fact relates to the real experience of thousands rather than that of the media and opposition party opportunism.
There have been similar improvements in attainment for the other three groups between the most and the least disadvantaged. The gaps between them and the least disadvantaged are narrower and, of course, of no interest to the media.
Away from formal examination-based assessment, there has been considerable progress on narrowing attainment gaps, in primary schools, at a stage when there is not the pressure to compete for access to high status universities. In December 2022, we could read in Scottish Government announcements, if not in the media:
“The poverty-related attainment gaps in literacy and numeracy levels across primary schools have seen the biggest decreases since records began, official statistics show. The gap between the proportion of primary pupils from the most and least-deprived areas achieving expected levels has narrowed by 3.4 percentage points in literacy and 3.7 percentage points in numeracy, according to the Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL) 2021/22. This marks the largest narrowing of the gap in a year since consistent records began in 2016/17. There has also been a record increase in the proportion of primary school pupils achieving the expected levels of literacy (up 3.7 percentage points to 70.5%) and numeracy (up 3.3 percentage points to 77.9%).”[vi]
Taken together and based on evidence, we see a very different picture of the achievements of the SNP in Government, in this last decade and more, in assisting schools and learners to achieve all that they can achieve.
In the end, of course, most of the credit goes to the learners and to the schools but just as the opposition parties would want to claim credit had they been in government and, had the trends that matter gone the other way, they would blame us for it, the SNP in government deserves its share.
[i] https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-attainment-initial-leaver-destinations-no-5-2023-edition/documents/
[ii] http://zhaolearning.com/2014/03/09/how-does-pisa-put-the-world-at-risk-part-1-romanticizing-misery/
[iii] https://progressgp.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/does-south-koreas-education-system-hurt-its-students/
[iv] https://thediplomat.com/2017/03/hong-kongs-wave-of-student-suicides/
[v] https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-attainment-initial-leaver-destinations-no-5-2023-edition/documents/
[vi] https://www.gov.scot/news/record-narrowing-of-the-attainment-gap/
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Another article that would be in the media in an independent Scotland.
Pisa has little practical value as being self selected it really is what every country wants it to be.
Improvements resulting from the investment of time, people and funds by the Scottish Government in spite of increased deprivation as a result of UK Government austerity and Scotland’s own Qualifications Authority use of an algorithm that selectively and secretly reduced the examination results of pupils in schools with lower performance levels.
The SQA is being replaced with a new body which will have to be transparent and fair to restore confidence in the Scottish examinations system.
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Pisa has been discredited. Often used on selective systems,. Selection screws the figures.
Other factors as well. Not comparing like with like. Suicidal pupils in Japan and Asia, Hot housing children not a good universal learning method.
The Tories cut Education funding £6Billion a year from 2015 to 2020. ConDems, A LibDem betrayal.
Scotland the first country to have tertiary education for all, 14 years,
Scotland has lifelong learning. 30% go to uni from school. 25% mature students, Introduced when the birth rate fell.1960’s Pill + contraception available.
EU students reciprocal. + foreign students paying the full cost. Scotland has 15 unis the most pro rata in the world. 5.4million pop. Colleges. Increased apprenticeships, Scotland has on of the best education systems in the world, The highest %. The next is Canada 56%.
There is a need for more additional needs training. All teachers should be informed. So everyone in Scotland can reach their full potential. Councils (unionist) employment more (untrained) classroom assistants than teachers. Instead of keeping class sizes down Council (unionist) do not build new schools until the pupils are there to occupy the school. Putting pressure on schools in the surrounding area when new houses are built,
The Scottish Gov had to mitigate Westminster education cuts,
Nursery places, school meals, more educated teachers, with higher salaries. Inclusion. Needs more specialise training but improving, Uni places, grants and loans. Support for those in foster care. Education grants and loans. Nil council tax. Kinship payments. Support for students. The highest ration in the world. There is no attainment gap. The highest attainment in the world. Education according to ability not the ability to pay.
Oxbridge funded 20 to 1 of all universities. The graduates ruin the world, Fee paying attainment gap. Totally out of touch. Wasting public monies like there is no tomorrow. Cutting Education funding. Selling off student loan books. Creating total debt. Ruining the economy for everyone. .
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A % of the population may never read or write well. Those with additional needs, They can be helped significantly with additional needs aids. Using computers etc. They are often extremely talents in sports or music etc. They just need help and understanding to achieve other goals. They often achieve with college and apprenticeships to achieve their full potential and goals. To class everything on reading and writing is a big mistake. Some extremely smart people have trouble with reading and writing but have high achievement. No attainment gab. Branson,
Captains of industry, poets, dancers, actors, painters. The list is endless. 20% of the population can have difficulties with reading or writing. Their is no attainment gap. They are high achievers in other ways. Use computers etc,
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Schools choose for themselves whether to enter PISA assessments – it is a self selecting sample, not a scientifically random or stratified sample that can be compared with the population as a whole.
It is quite likely that those schools who want to give their students more “examination practice” at 15 are more likely to volunteer for PISA. The PISA assessment timetable may also not suit some schools’ plans for preparing their students for the public assessments and examinations that actually count.
I’ve read that one state scores highly in PISA because it still has a de facto leaving age of 15, which means the weakest performers in examinations are not included as they have ceased being students. PISA may have some utility in comparing broad global trends at a specific stage (ie 15) every 5 years but as a system for comparing the micro differences between the 4 different education jurisdictions within the UK state, it is utterly useless.
But as also pointed out? it only measures what students achieve in formal tests rather than what they know or can do, and this therefore overrepresents those schools or education systems that emphasise the former rather than the latter.
It is particularly galling that Westminster politicians have jumped on the PISA bandwagon. I went to the Royal Statistical Society conference on Statistics of Education some 25 years ago where the late (and sadly missed) Professor Carol Fitzgibbon lambasted Westminster for its reliance on OFSTED verdicts in England, where the actual data showed the exact opposite of what OFSTED claimed for individual school performance.
Someone commented on the number of universities in Scotland per head as being an international indicator of education quality. That’s wrong. It’s not the number of designated universities that matters (and Scotland actually has a few more than 15) but the proportion of the population achieving HE qualifications at different levels. Scotland has a large college system that like the USA ‘community college’ system boosts participation significantly. An emphasis on designated universities (or even worse, only those with the University title) is a mistaken approach to education quality. 30 years ago the majority of honours graduates across the UK state did not attend university institutions by the way.
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Aside his postdoctoral experience stint as a statistician for the Agricultural Research Council, what experience does Paterson bring to his task beyond his kind being pilloried as Davros in Dr Who ?
Had his students the misfortune to tread a similar path, we could have ended up with an entire tribe of intelligent morons in Scottish politics supplanting the evergreen (moss-ridden) Turdo…
No offence intended to academics, but I’ve met his type before – The evidence says I’m right.
Strange isn’t it that Gove’s “we’ve had enough of experts” doesn’t extend to Lindsay, who pontificates on all manner of things with his blessing simply on the basis of stats.
Not for Lindsay how the bones fall, or the tea-leaves settle in the bottom of a cup, but computation – Yet this merely throws out the numbers not the interpretation – His is the field of numeric analysis with accent on the anal.
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‘Another article that would be in the media in an independent Scotland.’ Indeed so!
There is endless evidence of bias by omission being shown by the corporate media and in particular by the so-called ‘public service broadcaster’ in Scotland. As another example, how much media coverage did the following receive?
The Scottish Government published this report on May 31: ‘All Learners in Scotland Matter: Our National Discussion on Education’. The summary report can be found here https://www.gov.scot/publications/learners-scotland-matter-national-discussion-summary-report/pages/2/
Given the importance of education, the report’s forward looking focus, the substantial level of public engagement across Scotland (including with young people) involved in its production and the independent academic authors surely, this merits substantial media coverage by journalists employed to cover education policy matters!
From the summary report, for information: ‘The report is based on the findings of a listening exercise which took place between September 21 and December 5 2022.
‘The National Discussion was established in response to Professor Ken Muir’s report Putting Learners at the Centre which recommended that a national discussion take place to establish a compelling and consensual vision for the future of Scottish education. There was a particular the importance of placing the learner at the centre of all decisions.
‘The National Discussion was co-convened by the Scottish Government and COSLA and it was independently facilitated by Professor Carol Campbell and Professor Alma Harris who are members of the Independent Council of Education Advisors. They consulted more than a hundred organisations dedicated to supporting children and young people as well as education partners and parent and carer groups in designing the National Discussion. The grassroots approach they adopted led to an estimated 38,000 people being reached by the National Discussion.
‘A summary of the engagement is as follows:
– events and discussions took place in every part of Scotland, from Shetland to the Borders, led by schools, community groups, local authorities and third sector organisations
– feedback was received in a host of different ways – including drawings, mindmaps and videos
– more than 5,600 survey and email responses were received
over 200 group responses were submitted
– 26,000 pupils and students attended online school assemblies
– more than 80 people attended a series of online public events
– more than 6,000 posts on Twitter about the National Discussion using the hashtag #TalkScottishEducation.
‘Next Steps: The Scottish Government and COSLA will consider the report from Professors Campbell and Harris and work to ensure that the vision for Scottish education is realised for all learners.’
The news media in a (normal) independent country would surely find such a degree of national engagement on something as important as the future of school education a ‘good thing’, something worthy of substantial attention.
It seems that much of Scotland’s news media only view education (and other public policy matters) as worthy of attention when their gaslighting objectives can be advanced.
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Dunoon the best school in the world Scotland world famous universities and art schools. Colleges and apprenticeships. Life long learning, The first country to have tertiary education. Scotland the land of discovery and invention. Radio, TV, telecommunication. Leading on to the internet. A massive education tool. Scotland is admired around the world. A 40 million diaspora. Descended all around the world. US, Australia, Canada, NZ etc. EU connected. Medical science advancement, music, Burns, literature. Tartan, whisky. Oil & Gas technology. Renewables. Scotland the best place for renewables in the world. Wind, water, and sun. Engineering. People from Scotland built the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Cut the stone. Granite. One of the world’s landmarks. New Year. Auld Lang Syne. Welcomes in the next year. The Declaration of Arbroath. The basis of many democratic systems. The US founding fathers. The French Revolution. Liberty, fraternity and equality, One person,one vote.
Scotland outvoted 10 to 1 at Westminster. Not democratic. Barnett Formula. Unequal and unfair. Kept secret under the Official Secrets Act. Iraq, Dunblane and Lockerbie keot secret for 100 years.
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