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Professor John Robertson OBA

For no apparent reason in the text, BBC Scotland’s Lucy Adams has an extended report today – Has Scotland closed the attainment gap in schools?, with only one 5-year retired prof (Sue Ellis) as a source, only limited broad statistics to conceal areas of success and, of course a platform for the opposition parties to rant:

First Minister John Swinney is expected to renew this commitment ahead of another Holyrood campaign in 2026, but any assessment of his party’s progress so far might cast doubt on how realistic it is. Earlier this year he faced a rebuke from the UK statistics watchdog, external for his attainment gap claims, when celebrating his government’s achievements.

The political opposition has been scathing. Pam Duncan-Glancy, of Scottish Labour, said: “The SNP has gone from promising to close the attainment gap entirely to congratulating itself for the most incremental progress.” The Scottish Conservatives said Sturgeon’s promises lay “in tatters”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp37gj1xx48o

It’s not clear why neither Adams nor Ellis do not mention the easily accessed figures in this:

As BBC Scotland anticipate a widening attainment gap today, how the SNP HAS CLOSED the attainment gap within Scottish schools and WIDENED it with England

It’s probably very clear why a prof from Essex who never taught in Scottish schools and a half-witted journo don’t know these important facts:

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.

Source: https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-attainment-initial-leaver-destinations-no-5-2023-edition/documents/