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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
Thanks to rtpscott for alerting me to this.
Willie Rennie is in the P&J today to claim ‘SNP’s attainment gap promise lying in ruins’. This allows me to repeat a response which I know only a few hundred of the thousands following TuS across social media have actually looked at.
I include my experience above merely to suggest I might know a bit more about this than Willie Rennie, BSc Biology, Dip Ind Admin, ‘after graduation went on to work for the English Liberal Democrats in Cornwall. He then went on to work for the Liberal Democrats‘ campaigns department…’
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' 
” Only the working class get an education and the middle and upper class get sent to the fields”
Love that idea. Maybe show them what life is like on the other side of the tracks.
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Runnie Wullie.
Nuff said!
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Is that Wee Willie Rennie ? I thought he had been stuffed and was sitting on ACH’s mantel next to the Wally Dugs !
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The contrast in treatment by politicians and the mainstream media of the 2024-25 examination results in Scotland and in the rest of the UK was stark.
I listened to extensive news coverage by the BBC of the results for England, NI and Wales. Journalists, politicians and various ‘stakeholders’ commented on the nature, persistence and intractability of the attainment gap in England. Candidly, the coverage was informative: contributions were made in a ‘grown-up’ kind of way. Partisan politicking was at most minor.
Meanwhile in Scotland, opposition politicians use a mainstream media that is averse to UK-wide comparative analyses in order to enable political point scoring. Effectively this allows them all to dodge fundamental issues, to avoid having to address what are systemic issues not just in education but in society and across the whole UK.
The cover for the approach adopted by opposition politicians in Scotland is simple. It is a policy objective – an aspirational commitment – once set by a former First Minister in an SNP government which has not been met. But was it a daft objective?
Asked to inform on what and when FM Sturgeon committed to on the attainment gap, ChatGPT rightly observes: ‘That clarity—both in words and in timeline—helps explain why this pledge became a central benchmark for her education legacy.’ The AI tool offers this reflection: ‘Nicola Sturgeon’s commitment was indeed bold and honorable – but the evidence shows it was extremely ambitious. Still, that doesn’t mean such goals are inherently destructive or unfair; they challenge us to envision and invest in uplift that benefits everyone.’
Notwithstanding the ‘honorable’ mention, was Ms Sturgeon’s commitment misguided – wrong to make? Was it a daft objective in the first place – at least in the simple (simplistic?) way it was articulated? Why no explicit acknowledgement for example of the complementary importance – the benefits – of ‘progression’ within each quintile in the assessment of poverty or disadvantage?
On eliminating a poverty-related education attainment gap, has it ever been done, even substantially, in any other UK nation? Indeed, has as it ever been done in any Western democracy? Sturgeon’s commitment may have been laudable, but is such a thing really achievable without serious limits placed on the attainment of the LEAST disadvantaged? Is it really achievable without a government having the powers necessary to make radical socio-economic policy reforms, not just reform what happens within the education system?
To these questions, the AI research tool responded:
Has any Western democracy achieved—or substantially reduced—the poverty‑related attainment gap? Globally, no case of complete closure: there’s no Western democracy where the socioeconomic attainment gap has been fully eliminated. Most advanced countries—including those with strong social support systems—continue to exhibit persistent disparities tied to income and background.’ (my emphasis)
It added: ‘While countries in the Nordic region (like Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden) show relatively higher intergenerational mobility and narrower income-linked educational gaps, these do not equate to fully closed gaps—just comparatively better outcomes on average.’
It also referred to rare successes due to targeted programmes, but not full gap closure e.g. the London Challenge between 2001–2005, was an initiative focused on raising attainment in disadvantaged areas of London. It achieved notable progress, with GCSE results in London improving faster than the national average.
ChatGPT also asserts that the outcomes of the London Challenge demonstrate that lifting the performance of the most disadvantaged students does not have to occur alongside suppressing outcomes for the least disadvantaged. The overall attainment improved, including among disadvantaged pupils: ‘The idea is that raising the floor can lift all boats, not just level the waters.’
Intuitively ‘lifting all boats’ would seem to put ‘elimination’ of an educational attainment gap realistically beyond reach. Gap narrowing then becomes reliant on gradual convergence over time of relevant attainment metrics for the least AND most disadvantaged cohorts – convergence but only to a degree. Of course educational outcomes affected by levels of disadvantage are linked to a complex of socio-economic factors, including ones external to the sites of education provision.
My understanding is that the London Challenge was extended across England as the ‘City Challenge’, with very mixed results.
In summing up the legacy of the London Challenge and similar initiatives in England, Mansaray (2013 – an academic from Kings College London, School of Education, Communication and Society) noted: ‘In the current economic climate, the IFS have forecast that the number of children in poverty will increase considerably. This is likely to impact negatively on school attainment. Therefore tackling child poverty must be a key element in the drive to improve attainment.’
This must remain the case today and yet the British Labour Party in government in Westminster – with all the necessary powers – is still not acting to abolish the Tory two-child benefit cap.
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Scotland has the highest number of universities in the world. 15 pop 5.4million. Plus colleges. Apprenticeships. 30% go to uni from school. 25% mature students. 7% EU students. (15% before Brexit). Foreign students paying the full cost. Scotland has the highest number of students in the world. The next is Canada 56%
Mature students are not included in the numbers. Including mature students there is no attainment gap. Life long learning. Apprenticeships are helping neurodiverse people into jobs.
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