Education secretary will not apologise for failure to close poverty related attainment gap
Education secretary Mairi McAllan praised Scotland’s pupils for their results - but was bullish about the continued poverty related attainment gap
Too many school students in Scotland still face a “postcode lottery’ on educational achievement as the attainment gap between pupils from the richest and poorest areas refuses to close amid a near £2bn investment in tackling the issue over the past decade.
Pupils across the country celebrated an increase in pass rates for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher across the board with the highest number of 18-year-olds qualifying for a place at university reaching a record high this year, including those from more deprived neighbourhoods.
However, as 148,000 people received exam results yesterday, figures released by the Scottish government show a 25 per cent point gap remains between the richest and poorest students.
Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon pledged that the attainment gap would be repaired by 2026 with the issue a key priority for the government since 2015.
On Tuesday, Scotland’s education secretary refused to apologise for the government’s failure to close it amid a slight narrowing in the figures. Political opponents decribed progress as “painfully slow”.
Speaking to The Scotsman at Edinburgh’s Broughton High School, Mairi McAllan said: “We have had covid in the intervening period, a hugely disruptive event, particularly for young people living in poverty.
“So it will take time to get through that.
“But actually, what we're seeing in both last year's exam results and this year's exam results in the academic attainment is that the gap is narrowing and it's narrowing further.”
Ms McAllan hailed this year’s results and said Scotland’s young people have “outdone themselves again”.
Last year was the first “normal” exam season following the Covid-19 pandemic and so this year’s results represented a significant test of progress.
They show the Higher pass rate has risen, albeit marginally, from 76.1 per cent to 76.7 per cent.
While it is higher than 2019, a year where Higher pass rates declined sharply, this year’s numbers are still down on 2016, 2017 and 2018.
The 2026 National 5 pass rate of 79.2 per cent is just shy of the 79.6 per cent recorded in 2017. However, rates at all levels remain below pre-pandemic levels, with the Advanced Higher rate yet to break 80 per cent as it did between 2016 and 2018.
The gap between attainment in state schools and fee-paying secondaries remained high also.
Some 92.3 per cent of private school pupils passed Higher at A to C grades compared to 75.7 per cent for state schools.
For National 5s, this was 94.3 per cent compared to 78.4 per cent and at Advanced Higher the comparison was 91.7 per cent and 75 per cent.
Nicola Sturgeon promised in 2015 that her government would close the poverty-related attainment gap - the gulf in achievement between children in SID1 and SIMD5 - by 2026.
The attainment gap has narrowed but only by a slim margin and is still wider than pre-pandemic years.
The National 5 attainment gap for pass rates is now at 15.6 percentage points.
This is one percentage point lower than last year and lower than 2018 and 2019, but still higher than the levels seen in 2016 and 2017.
The gap at Higher has fallen to 15.9 percentage points, which is higher than that recorded in 2016, 2017, and 2018, but lower than 2019.
At Advanced Higher level, the gap is now 12.1 percentage points, down from 12.8 last year.
This is higher than the corresponding figure from 2016, 2017, and 2018, but lower than 2019.
Ms McAllan described Advanced Highers as the “jewel in the academic crown” of Scottish education.
She said: “I would reflect on that: that a great deal has already been done to stabilise the education system after what was a really, really disruptive event.
“The question of Advanced Highers is interesting.”
The education secretary noted the 1000 extra pupils who sat Advanced Highers this year.
She added: “So it could be that, as the number of young people attempting that pinnacle of academic school award, that the results will fluctuate.
“But in any case, it is the jewel in the academic crown of the school education system in Scotland, and like Nat 5 and Higher, I want to see it recover to pre-pandemic levels.”
To correct the attainment gap, she said the government is investing in the teaching workforce, reducing class contact time and reforming the curriculum as well as investing in ASN provision.
Scottish Tory education spokeswoman Meghan Gallacher laid the blame for the attainment gap at the feet of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon.
“Despite the wonderful achievements of our young people, SNP ministers have absolutely no room for complacency,” she said.
“No amount of spin can hide the fact that the results confirm Nicola Sturgeon’s betrayal of Scotland’s poorest pupils.
“She wanted to eradicate the poverty-related attainment gap and promised to have substantially eliminated it by 2026.
“Sturgeon and this SNP government have miserably failed to do so.
“They have made painfully slow progress in reducing it since the pandemic and on the nationalists’ watch, it is clear far too many of Scotland’s pupils are still facing a postcode lottery when it comes to their chances of educational achievement.
“Sturgeon and (John) Swinney should do the right thing and apologise to those pupils in our most deprived communities.”
Scottish Labour education spokeswoman Katherine Sangster welcomed the improvement in results, but added there was “no room for complacency”.
“No child should be held back by their postcode or their background, but it’s clear far more must be done to tackle the damaging inequalities in our education system,” she said.
“We need an education system that can unlock the potential of every child and give them the opportunities they deserve.”
Mc McAllan also pointed to the fact that more young people from deprived backgrounds are going on to university.
Overall, the number of 18-year-olds who qualified for a place at university reached a record high this year.
The number of those from deprived areas reached the highest on record.
According to the Scottish government, the total number of students aged 18 who achieved the grades for the 2026 academic year is 17,920, up from 17,350 last year.
Those from deprived areas saw a seven per cent increase to 2,090, which the government said is the highest on record for this stage in the cycle, and acceptances across all ages were 32,370.
Free university places for Scotland-domiciled students has become increasingly controversial as the further education sector faces a debilitating landscape.
Ms McAllan said she can give Scotland’s young people a “cast-iron guarantee that so long as the SNP's government is in government, university tuition will remain free, and she was very happy to hear that”.
She added: “So not only is it affordable, but it is the right thing for our economy and for our society.”
Asked whether there should be more funding going to universities, the cabinet secretary said Westminster’s immigration policies are causing a block on finances.
Ms McAllan said: “I'll tell you how we could get more money into universities - if the UK government weren't taking a ridiculous approach to student visas and putting off, or indeed just prohibiting foreign students from being able to come and contribute not only to our universities but to our economy, to our culture.
“That has been one of the defining problems for our universities, and I hope that with the new prime minister and the new education secretary, that reversing some of those damaging changes will be possible.”
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