Professor John Robertson OBA
Labour Deputy Leader candidate, Phillipson, is in the Record today criticising the SNP for supposed failings with regard to the young. That takes nerve and the most shiny of brass necks.
I’m going to have to be very selective and use a few examples of how Labour rather than the SNP, in the past and today regularly betrays the young.
First, school exclusions plummet to just over a quarter of the level under Labour and full ‘expulsions’ to just one three-hundredth of the level then
From School exclusion statistics published in April 2025, we can see that there were 39 717 temporary exclusions across Scotland in 2007/2008 and 11 676 in 2022/20231, the most recent figures. This a stunning decline further casting doubt of opposition party claims of a surge in school violence.
From the same data, we can see the number of pupils removed from the register, permanent exclusions, ‘expelled‘ as we might have said, fell from 292 in 2002/2003 to only 1 in the last two years.
I think this kind of comparison with the past is acceptable to Unionists. I’ll look at the figures for England separately.
Source:
Second, school suspensions 4 times more, and full expulsions shocking 600 times more, common in England’s not so fair and pleasant land
From the Scotsman, no friend of the SNP Government, on 25 March 2024:
Across Scotland, there were 11,675 cases of temporary exclusion of any length of time, with just one pupil being expelled, as previously revealed by The Scotsman. The figures compare to 39,553 temporary exclusions and 164 permanent in 2007, when the SNP came to power.
So, with 10 times the population, all things being equally progressive and hopefully not too nasty and socially divisive, England’s schools might be expected to have around 120 000 suspensions and only 10 expulsions or permanent exclusions.
However, based of figures from GOV.UK, in England, there were 511 270 suspensions, more than 4 times as many pro rata, and 6 143 permanent exclusions, more than 600 times as many pro rata.
Sources:
Third, neither ‘Nic’ nor the SNP have ‘failed poor kids’ as attainment among them doubles
Here’s what we really need to be saying about the achievements of the SNP in government resulting from their long steady commitment to funding and staffing schools at a level far above that in the rest of the UK and a collegiate style in working with teachers, which together has enable teachers and students to progress these last 18 years in ways less likely in, again, other parts.
In my 50 years researching and thinking, talking with colleagues across school and higher education, I’ve never met anyone of substance 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:
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.
Fourth and finally for today, how the SNP HAS CLOSED the attainment gap within Scottish schools and WIDENED it with England
August 5th 2025. BBC UK’s Scotland Correspondent repeated the old ‘concerns about the Scottish Government’s failure to close the attainment gap.‘ It’s a lie.
From the Scottish Government’s Literacy and numeracy standards reach record high report in December 2024:
The proportion of pupils achieving the expected level in literacy and numeracy across primary and secondary schools has reached a new high, officials figures show.
For numeracy, a record 80.3% of pupils across P1, P4 and P7 reached expected levels, while S3 also reached a new high of 90.3%. For literacy, achievement is also now at a record high in both primary (74%) and secondary (88.3%).
The attainment gap between young people from the most and least deprived areas meeting standards in literacy has also reached a new low, according to the latest Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence levels 2023-24 (ACEL) statistics.
In England, on 9 July 2024 [latest data], for 11 year-olds [P7]:
[Only] 61% of pupils reached the expected standard in all of reading, writing and maths, up from 60% in 2023. This is below 2019 attainment, where 65% of pupils met the standard.
Direct comparison with education in other countries is not always reliable but had this stark contrast [20-30% better] operated in the opposite direction, with England at 80% and Scotland at 61%, you can be sure our media would be all over it.
Also, ignored:
A game-changer in education, the narrowing of the attainment gaps and the increased attainment of the most disadvantaged
to my mind, after nearly 40 years in education, more important than narrowing gaps is increased attainment for the most disadvantaged:
At SCQF level 7, the gap in 2009/10, two years after the SNP first came to power, was 24.1 and by 2021/22 it was still 22.2, though down from 25 in the previous year. If you have limited understating of statistics or cynically only wish to accuse the SNP Government of failure, these statistics hide the true nature of change.
In 2009/10 only 4.7% of those in the most disadvantaged 20% had achieved at this level but by 2021/22, the figure was 10.3%, more than doubling in only 12 years. Remember also, that 20% means nearly 3 000 pupils every year
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BAD MOUTHED ENGLISH SHOULD STAY IN ENGLAND
SCOTS DO NOT NEED ANY MORE VICIOUS COMMENTS
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Edinburgh BritNat anti SNP rag ‘evening news’ propaganda sheet other day, ‘council leader says Edinburgh poverty levels are a disgrace, or something akin to that as a front page headline. I thought, hmm, weird because Labour and their bestie pals Tories run the council and also control most of Scotland’s economy from her partys’ headquarters in er, London as well as some crucial policies that keep people poor in Scotland.
Labour/Tory coalition council in Edinburgh won’t even introduce a tourist tax which would bring in huge sums to er, help relieve their Labour governments’ imposed austerity and therefore poverty in the city, which seem to have more tourists than ever!! The city is a mess as well, since 2022 when the LabTorycoms took control of the council, they have destroyed the city, it’s looks more like somewhere like Gateshead in NE England, a poor destitute, uncared for city,
not the well-off capital city of Scotland that we should be seeing. It’s utterly tragic, unecessary, deliberate and despicable.
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They used to exclude kids with autism for being bullied so they didn’t have to support them (SEN) as was their statutory oblilgation hence the huge figures in 2007/08 when the BritNats controlled Holyrood and I guess most councils in Scotland.
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Phllipson is doing what every Westminster politician of both parties in power has been doing for decades, blaming everybody and anybody else… It’s why belief in Westminster politics has almost collapsed, and should Reform gain power, will disappear entirely within a couple of years…
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