I had the honour of closing the Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC) national event in Glasgow, hot on the heels of thought-provoking talks by Graeme Armstrong, author of The Young Team, and Chris Birt, associate director for Scotland at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
They reminded me of the difference that education can make in a young person’s life, of the power it can have.
Education remains one of the most effective means that we have to improve the life chances of all of our young people. Our job as senior leaders, practitioners and teachers is to make sure that every young person in Scotland is thriving, not just surviving.
To do that we need to have a shared professional agenda.
Since its launch in 2015, the SAC has sought to encourage a collaborative approach to raising attainment and reducing educational inequity across Scotland.
At key points over the years, papers such as the Scottish Attainment Challenge: Recovery and Progress Report on 2021-22 and last week’s Scottish Attainment Challenge National Summary Report have provided updates on the impact of the SAC and identified the next steps for continuous improvement.
Thanks to the fieldwork by Education Scotland’s attainment advisers in local authorities, who coordinate and support appropriate evidence-based interventions, we know that many authorities have improved their use and analysis of data to inform action to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap. They have also increased engagement with children and young people and their families, helping to make their voices heard.
Tackling the attainment gap in schools
Local authority and school plans have been robustly reviewed to identify where there may be a need for targeted or intensive support. Schools within the same local authorities have shared practice and information on interventions to help ensure that Pupil Equity Funding (PEF) is more appropriately targeted.
In saying that, the global pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have had a disproportionate impact on children affected by poverty.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s recent report Deepening poverty in Scotland - no one left behind? illustrates how, despite overall poverty levels falling in Scotland over the past two decades, the number of people in very deep poverty has risen dramatically.
During their addresses at the SAC national event, the cabinet secretary for education and skills, Jenny Gilruth, and the director for learning at the Scottish government, Graeme Logan, talked about how the challenges we face today are vastly different to the ones we faced seven or eight years ago.
As educators, it is our responsibility to react to these changes and ensure that equity lies at the heart of the education experience for all. For this, continuous collaboration is key.
While there is so much passion for this work from those leading it, there remains a relentless focus - a relentless indignation, even - that actually our young people need and deserve as much as we can bring to accelerate progress in closing the poverty-related attainment gap in Scottish education
This year we worked with the Scottish government, as well as internal and external stakeholders, to take forward the SAC refresh and the implementation of the Scottish Attainment Challenge Framework for Recovery and Accelerating Progress.
Our attainment advisers contributed significantly to the development of this revised framework and continue to work closely with schools and local authorities to gather evidence to help improve educational outcomes.
We are particularly proud of the support that attainment advisers have provided to local authorities and schools in various ways.
Feedback has indicated that this sort of support leads to better knowledge of what works well when it comes to the SAC, including around “stretch aims” and Strategic Equity Funding (SEF).
For me, a key message from the event in Glasgow is to remember what we’re building on. We’re not starting from scratch. An enormous amount of good work around the SAC has already taken place in our schools, our communities and across our local authorities.
I talked earlier about having a collective mission, and I’m hoping that the work achieved over the past eight years spurs us on to even greater collective action - because Scotland’s children can’t wait.
Gillian Hamilton is interim chief executive of Education Scotland
Scottish Attainment Challenge national resources:
