Professor John Robertson OBA, for nearly 40 years a schoolteacher, a teacher education lecturer, Associate Dean for Quality Assurance, research methods lecturer, PhD supervisor and Faculty Research Ethics Chair
The ‘Scottish’ media are frothing today about the SNP failing to narrow the attainment gap between those students from the most and the least deprived areas.
In my 50 years researching and thinking, talking with colleagues across school and higher education, I’ve never met anyone who thinks we should be worrying about or trying to do anything about narrowing the class-based gap.
Only in Albania and Maoist China were the gaps narrowed, reversed even, by only allowing the poor to get an education and sending children of the middle classes and the rich to work in the fields and factories.
It’s a kind of madness but opposition parties and their media pals subscribe to it happily
We, IN education, all think that unless you’re going to, like those mad dictatorships, segregate on the basis of class, any enhancement of school education will inevitably and enthusiastically be exploited by ambitious middle class kids and their parents. The disadvantaged WILL do better but so will the more advantaged and the gap will still be largely the same.
What you can and should do is worker harder to improve the attainment within the disadvantaged group and, hey, what do you think has been happening there, these last 10 to 15 years, but totally ignored by critics?
Using data from Summary Statistics for Attainment and Initial Leaver Destinations, No. 5: 2023 Edition published in February 2023 (I can see no such in 2024, or 2025 yet):
In 2009/10 only 27.2% had achieved at Level 6 (Higher and above) and only 4.7% at Level 7 (Advanced Higher), of those in the most disadvantaged 20% had achieved at this level, but by 2021/22, the figures were 46.6% and 10.3%, almost and 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 level 7 and by 2021/22, the figure was 38.8%, a smaller in percentage but larger in actual numbers, increase.
So, despite the major improvement among those from the most deprived 20%, there had also been a significant improvement among the least deprived 20%.
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.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
You are, of course, right to highlight the significant increases in attainment of students from the lowest socioeconomic quintile. If a greater number of those young people are attaining the levels of attainment that enables them to seek access to the kinds of Further and Higher Education courses and occupations then that in itself is a good thing and worthy of recognition. And, Education is not just about socioeconomic progression, it is also about personal development, about increasing self respect, about gaining a sense of agency.
The fact that a greater proportion of those from the higher socioeconomic quintiles attaining the top grades is a socioeconomic issue which it behoves political parties to address – what are the impediments to some young people from the lowest socioeconomic quintile attaining more highly? The answer lies largely in the lack of money and the quality of life factors that this lack of money denies them. Lack of money is not the only factor – the access to public services like health services, transport, play groups, libraries are also relevant. Incomes need to be improved as does the provision of public services.
Labour’s vacuous 2024 slogan ‘change’ is, in practice, a change to even greater inequality and disempowerment.
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‘The ‘Scottish’ media are frothing today about the SNP failing to narrow the attainment gap between those students from the most and the least deprived areas.’
I asked ChatGPT this question: ‘Is the poverty-related attainment gap as politicised by opposition political parties and the news media in England and Wales as in Scotland? And why?
This is its response summary: ‘Scotland has experienced intense political and media scrutiny because poverty-related attainment gap metrics are explicitly tied to government pledges. Successes and failures are amplified and often politicized.
‘In England and Wales, the attainment gap is treated more as a persistent structural problem, less as a political litmus test. Media and opposition criticism focus on general educational standards, funding, and recovery programmes, rather than direct failure to meet a narrowed-gap pledge.
‘The result is a far more politically charged and media-saturated environment in Scotland, unlike in England and Wales, where the discourse is broader and less centered on government identity.’
So in a politically charged environment like Scotland’s, might a governing party get more favourable media coverage by NOT setting ambitious social policy targets, by not committing to try to change matters for the better? Perhaps in the context of having severely limited fiscal and zero monetary policy levers, and in the face of Westminster-imposed austerity – and then an unpredicted global pandemic – joining the Westminster consensus and treating the poverty-related attainment gap as (just) a ‘persistent structural problem’ would have been the ‘wiser’ political choice.
But then with a pro-independence political party governing in Scotland, no doubt the mainstream media would have found some other reason to politicise education outcomes here in ways not replicated in England and Wales.
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As far as I am aware , those from the ”high attainment ” class ( rich and mostly privately educated ) have dominated UK Governments and our services for ever and they have made the UK the successful prosperous country we know today ( LoL ! ).
Surely we should be avoiding encouraging more of our kids to emulate these ”high attainers” and continuing the decline of our economy and other services at the hands of these ”successful students ”?
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