In the Herald today, under a frankly creepy image:
Scottish Labour has accused the SNP of “breaking The Promise” after new figures showed the attainment gap between looked-after children and their peers has widened in recent years. Looked-after children are young people in the care of their local authority, including those in foster care, residential care, kinship care or some children living at home under formal supervision.
How many times have I pointed out that not one credible, peer-review published educational researcher, across the globe, cares about attainment gaps. They care about improvements within disadvantaged groups over time. They know that the middle classes and their children will exploit any improvements, attain even more and perpetuate, to a large extent, any gap. No democratic country has ever fully closed the attainment gaps between the most and the least disadvantaged.
Only Maoist China and Albania have ever really tackled the gap by simply, if brutally, sending the children of the educated into the fields and reserving higher education for the children of so-called ‘workers.’
Only fully removing all economic, social and cultural gaps, creating a fairly equal society where manual workers are not paid one-thousandth of the chief exec’s salary, as in the UK, offers the realistic prospect of closing the educational attainment gap and you can be damn sure that Labour no longer has any interest in that, depending as they do on votes from the least disadvantaged.
So, has the SNP enabled improvements in the attainment of looked-after children over time?
Yes.
From Education Outcomes for Looked After Children 2024/25 published on 23 June 2026, we see for looked after leavers:
So, just three years into and SNP administration, the above percentages and fifteen years later, the 2025 figures below:
At every level, significant improvements, three times as many at level 5 [Nat 5], eight times as many at level 6 [Higher] and an infinite improvement at level 7 [Advanced Higher].
A massive reduction in those leaving with no awards from 25% to 15%.
These are monstrous achievements to be really proud of.
As for the above image of a primary-school age little red riding hood, what does this dark theatrical suggestion of threatened virginity, of menstruation and the gaze of the rapist, have to do with the thousands of children cared for and taught by dedicated caring professionals and with their glowing success these last 15 years?
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I love the caption too:
“Does the Scottish Child Payment remove incentive to work?”
All these little scivers hanging around in school when they should be in sweatshops earning tax.
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As you say ‘the Gap’ as an indicator of success is of little value and is largely there so that politicians and media can apportion blame.
With regard to ‘looked after’ children, a key factor is to ensure that there is structure and routine in their lives. This requires good relations amongst local school staff, social workers and care home staff, with staff whose job is to coordinate the efforts of the three main groups. We need to ensure that ‘looked after’ children can participate to the same extent as other children in activities outwith the curriculum – school outings, membership of school teams, choirs, drama productions, school trips, etc. These things require specific funding, because in most cases, families will fund these activities.
Nearly 30 years ago in the school where I was a member of staff, we did these kinds of things. The measure used at the time was the number of Standard Grades attained. For the school, as a whole, the average number attained per pupil was about 7.3. For the ‘looked after’ children on the roll, the average per child was about 6.8. The ‘gap’ was largely explained by the one or two children who failed to complete the courses and turn up for exams.
Shortly after the 1997 election, to my surprise, I received a phone all from ‘The Prime Minister’s Office’! The person on the phone said, ‘Tony (sic!) is on his way to Scotland to meet Directors and Convenors of Education and he asked me to congratulate your colleagues for the attainment level of ‘looked after children’. Your average is 6.8 per pupil, the average for ‘looked after children’ for the whole of the UK is ‘less than 1’!
In England, Bridget Phillipson, seems to me to be on this wavelength and, if she can get such funding then the Barnett formula will provide Scotland with more.
I agree with your views on the photograph. The lane where the girl is looks to me like stock footage of lanes in the north of England.
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12,000 children in care in Scotland. 6,000 still at home or in kinship care. Kinship payment less than foster care.
SNP introduced educational grants, staying longer in foster care. Affordable housing and no council tax.
UK Gov cut welfare care for young people. Cut benefits.
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I fired off several emails to LBC today furious at their continual lazy acceptance when opposition figures say Scottish education is failing. It’s hard not to despair at time with this endless fight to get a fair hearing. One source of comfort is Zach Polanski’s Bold Politics on youtube, this one was very good I thought https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13zQVPW9LjU
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Despair? Don’t we know about that. Nil desperandum B
J
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