By Leah Gunn Barrett

After the recent disinformation about the state of Scottish education, today’s news that Scottish students across all levels are performing better in literacy and numeracy compared to last year is welcome.^[1] The Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL) uses teacher judgment to report the proportion of students reaching targets for their grade level and the 2022/23 results show a rise in attainment levels across all primary grades and S3 since 2021/22. 

The other piece of good news is that the attainment gap between students from the most and least deprived areas has narrowed across the board, marking the second year of improvement since the pandemic. In fact, students in 2022/23 did better than in 2018/19, the last time data was collected, demonstrating a clear rise in standards above pre-pandemic levels.^[2]

I’m betting these results won’t be plastered across the Scottish media like the PISA results were. I wonder if Gillian Keegan, the English Education Minister, will be asked to comment, or Anas Sarwar, manager of English Labour’s Scottish branch office. 

Scots are subjected to a daily avalanche of negativity by the unionist press that will only stop when we kick out the English political parties, end the dead-end devolution settlement and declare our independence from a foreign nation that has plundered our resources, denigrated our language, culture and people, and sapped our confidence. 

---

^[1] https://uk.news.yahoo.com/teachers-report-record-achievement-levels-103802426.html#:~:text=80%25%20of%20primary%20students%20were,even%20with%20pre%2Dpandemic%20levels.

^[2] ibid