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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

From Comparing inequality and outcomes across post-16 education in the UK, published in the last few days:

Since the formal introduction of devolution in the late 1990s, post-16 education and training (E&T)
has looked increasingly different across the four nations of the UK, particularly as policy
approaches have diverged. With such differences in post-16 E&T across the UK, there are clear
opportunities to learn lessons from different policy approaches, structures, pathways, and
stakeholder experiences.
This report is a summary of a programme of work that sets out how post-16 E&T should change to
meet increasingly complex challenges and what we can learn from differences in policy
approaches across the four nations of the UK. The following sections summarise the key lessons,
conclusions and recommendations we have reached across the project.

In the report, there are several references to the Scottish system, often encouraging and supportive of the efforts of the current Scottish Government these last 18 years and often condemnatory of Labour’s efforts in Wales over decades.

On page 6:

Across all nations, young people from working class backgrounds are far less likely to achieve Level 3 or degree-level qualifications than their peers from professional backgrounds. Such inequalities are widest in Wales — driven by particularly low attainment and stagnating higher education participation, especially among boys — and smallest in Scotland, where overall attainment is higher across all groups.

on page 11:

Education and training systems are coordinated differently across the four nations, with different
roles for government and the market in each context. In Scotland and Wales, there is an explicit emphasis on taking a ‘systems-based approach’ with the state playing a much greater role in coordinating the system. This is reflected in efforts to link further education (FE) and higher education (HE), as well as research and innovation, within a holistic tertiary sector in a way that emphasises the distinctive and complementary nature of both academic and vocational pathways.

On page 14:

Perhaps the best way to judge and compare qualification outcomes across the four nations is the
share of adults achieving Level 3 qualifications over time. With this in mind, Figure 2 shows the
share of men and women with Level 3 qualifications or higher across the four nations by school
year of birth. This shows rising shares of men and women possessing Level 3 qualifications over
time across all nations, with faster rises over time for women.

There is also persistent evidence of a higher share of men and women possessing Level 3 qualifications in Scotland over time. For the most recent cohorts born in the late 1980s, about 75-80 per cent of men and women in Scotland possessed Level 3 qualifications as compared with 70 per cent or lower in England and Northern Ireland. Perhaps more worryingly, the share of men with Level 3 qualifications or higher in Wales has remained around 60-65 per cent across those born in the late 1970s through to at least those born in the late 1980s.

On page 17:

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, about 85 per cent of young adults from a professional background achieve Level 3 qualifications or higher. This compares with about 72 per cent for those from intermediate backgrounds in England and Northern Ireland, and about 60 per cent for those from working class
backgrounds. These figures were lowest in Wales for those from intermediate backgrounds (68 per cent) and working-class backgrounds (56 per cent). Similar gaps were evident in Scotland, except that children from all backgrounds were 7-9 percentage points more likely to achieve Level 3 qualifications or higher for all parental occupational backgrounds. This again reflects the generally the high levels of participation in education in Scotland.

On page 20:

Qualifications and measures of deprivation differ in Scotland. The most relevant statistics suggest
that 44 per cent [39% in Wales and 38% in England] of pupils in the most deprived areas of Scotland achieved SCQF Level 6 when they left school (broadly equivalent to Level 3 across the rest of the UK). This fits with other statistics showing higher levels of attainment in Scotland across the board.

Source: https://epi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Comparing-inequality-and-outcomes-across-post-16-education-in-the-UK.pdf