Scotland did not perform well in the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa). That much has been widely aired since the publication of the results last December. The average attainment in mathematics, science and reading were all down in 2022 compared with 2018.
In maths and science, the fall has been steady since 2012. Although reading has fluctuated in that time, there was a sharp decline from the beginning of the century. Some of the drop since 2018 was because of the Covid disruption but that was not the only reason because in mathematics, and perhaps in science, the fall was greater than in England.
Comparison with England is always valuable because the general social context is so similar - not only in terms of the experience of Covid but also in such matters as levels of social inequality and legislation on equality and human rights.
‘Many other troubling features in Scotland’s results’
Beyond these headline points, my new analysis of the Pisa data - published in the journal Scottish Affairs this month - shows that there are many other troubling features of Scotland’s results. In science and maths, Scotland has been behind England since 2006 in terms of high levels of attainment (students in the top 10 per cent). Scotland used to be ahead for the lowest 10 per cent, but has fallen behind in that category since 2012. In reading, Scottish attainment has held up at the highest level, but has steadily declined at the lowest.
The same is true of socioeconomic inequality. The Pisa data measures this via an index of social and cultural resources. Comparing the top and bottom quarters of this, we find that in maths and science, Scottish inequality was falling up to 2018 but only because the attainment in the highest-status quarter was declining. Then the fall between 2018 and 2022 was greatest among the lowest status. The best that can be said about inequality in reading is that it hasn’t changed much since 2012.
Matters are worse in all three domains for low-status girls. They did particularly badly between 2018 and 2022, compared with their male or high-status counterparts in Scotland, and compared with all sex-by-status groups in England.
Of course, attainment in cognitive domains isn’t everything. But there isn’t much consolation from Pisa’s non-cognitive evidence. Despite Scottish policy paying attention to students’ motivation, behaviour and sense of being part of a school community, there is scant evidence that Scotland is any better in these respects than England.
For example, in reply to a question about “motivating myself to do school work”, 47 per cent in each country replied that they were “confident” or “very confident”. The proportions on “completing school work independently” were 71 per cent in Scotland and 70 per cent in England.
Scotland slightly better than England on behaviour
On behaviour, Scotland was only slightly better than England. For example, on the statement “there is noise and disorder in every or most lessons”, the proportion agreeing was 30 per cent in Scotland and 35 per cent in England. On the statement “I observed a fight on school property in the last four weeks in which someone got hurt”, 36 per cent in Scotland agreed, only slightly lower than the 39 per cent in England. The same was true of feeling part of a school community. In reply to the statement “I feel I belong at school”, the percentages who “agreed” or “strongly agreed” were 67 per cent in Scotland and 63 per cent in England.
There was also no evidence that Scottish schools are inducing Scottish adolescents to be global citizens. The evidence for this comes from the 2018 round of Pisa (not 2022). Scotland was the only part of the UK that took part. In one respect, Scotland did rather well. In a test of global competence, Scottish students were behind only Canada and Singapore, and ahead of all these European Union countries that participated.
But comparing Scottish students’ global competence with the rather small group of 27 countries that took this test is not as informative as the much wider comparisons that are available for the tests of reading, mathematics and science (81 in 2022).
Question mark over ‘global competence’ positives
On the attainment tests in 2018, in almost all respects Scotland also performed better than the EU countries that took the test of global competence. But only if we had global-competence results from countries that performed better than Scotland in several aspects of attainment - such as Estonia, England and Ireland - could we reasonably conclude that Scotland’s global competence was relatively better than Scotland’s attainment.
Nevertheless, the test results were supplemented by questionnaires that asked students about their attitudes to various aspects of global interconnectedness.
Many more countries used these (66 in total, though again, not the rest of the UK). Scotland mostly had slightly higher proportions of students holding respectful, tolerant and liberal views.
For example, Scottish young people had very positive attitudes towards immigrants, on all aspects of the question - equal opportunities for immigrant children, right to vote, right to a distinctive culture, general rights - where the proportions in support of the liberal position were about 88 per cent in Scotland but about 13 points lower across the participating EU countries.
When asked if they were taught about global matters in school, however, Scottish students generally were more likely to say that they weren’t than students in other places. For example, for learning in school about different cultures, the proportions were 70 per cent in Scotland but 76 per cent across the European Union. For learning about solving conflicts, they were 52 and 61 per cent. For learning about the interconnectedness of economies, they were 40 and 56 per cent.
There are thus only a few encouraging conclusions for Scottish education policy from a decade and a half of results from the Pisa study. In all three domains of attainment, Scottish performance has declined since early in the century. And there was no compensating encouragement for Scottish policy in other aspects of students’ experience.
Lindsay Paterson is a professor emeritus of education policy at the University of Edinburgh
*A fuller version of this analysis is published in the spring 2024 issue of the journal Scottish Affairs, available to download for free
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