Professor John Robertson OBA
From Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels 2024-25 published today, we see that in Scotland’s schools there have been significant increases in the numbers of pupils achieving the expected levels in the four years since the pandemic.1
Remember these, at first sight, small percentage differences refer to around 50 000 pupils at each level so the 4% improvement in S3 literacy means 2 000 more pupils succeeded last year than in 2021/2022.
Scotland’s media have yet to respond. It will be interesting if irritating to see how they try to spin this success down.
The situation in England though based on assessing slightly different year groups for the Primary but not the secondary stages2 looks far worse and requires media exposure I’d say:
For end KS1 (Year 2, ~Primary 2) and KS2 (Year 6, end Primary 6), averaged:
Literacy 68% – 74% in Scotland for P1, P2 and P7 – almost 10% more attaining at this level.
Numeracy: 72% – 80% in Scotland for P1, P2 and P7 – more than 10% more attaining at this level.
For Year 10:
Literacy 70.6% – 89.8% in Scotland for S3 – 27% more!
Numeracy: 70.3% – 90.1% – in Scotland for S3 – 27% more!
There are difficulties in comparing these two assessment systems. The English system is more objective and single test-based while the Scottish one relies more on ongoing teacher assessment. There is a case to be made that the latter is a better test of how some one might perform in a work-setting over a long period.
Imagine, however, if the results went the opposite way? The above would be niceties to be ignored by the Scottish media
Remember these percentages apply to around 50 000 and 500 000 pupils in England and Scotland respectively. The above 27% gap means thousands of Scots pupils attaining who might not have done so had they gone to English schools and tens of thousands of English pupils not attaining but who might well have had they gone to Scottish schools.
Sources:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
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