In recent weeks, we in education circles have delighted in media coverage of the successes in closing the poverty-related attainment gap. The nine Scottish Attainment Challenge local authorities were inspected by Education Scotland between December 2017 and spring 2019; all reports have been positive and the evidence gathered demonstrates that the gap is narrowing.

We rightly applaud these improvements, and, in particular, the work described as “excellent” in Glasgow and Renfrewshire. But no sooner had we celebrated this success than we had to react to the publication of flawed exam league tables, which are destructive to all that is positive in our schools. This has become an annual struggle and presents a real dichotomy in education in Scotland. However, I want to focus on another contradiction that needs airing concerning the attainment gap.

The Scottish government is clear in its intention to achieve equity in education through ensuring that every child has the same opportunity to succeed - by minimising the impact of poverty on attainment. And it has created a £750 million Scottish Attainment Fund to be invested over this parliamentary term (2016-21).

There is overwhelming evidence of a strong correlation between a pupil’s socio-economic status and educational attainment; pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds have a higher chance of not succeeding in school. For example, the proportion of school leavers from Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) 1 and 2 - that is, the most-deprived areas - leaving school with at least one Higher is 42.7 per cent. Meanwhile, among young people from the top two deciles, the figure is higher than 80 per cent.

During the first two years of the fund, £52 million was distributed to the nine Challenge authorities, plus 74 other schools with the highest levels of deprivation, as indicated by the SIMD. Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) allocations, meanwhile, go to schools on the basis of free-meal-entitlement data, and are spent at headteachers’ discretion; in 2017-18, just over £120 million was allocated across the country (see bit.ly/SGfunding).

Unfortunately, it would appear that the Scottish Attainment Fund is not new funding. While £170 million from the fund has been allocated to schools and Attainment Challenge programmes, the revenue budget to councils has fallen by more than £500 million. Local authorities, which remain the statutory bodies for the delivery of educational services, have faced a reduction in funding since 2013. In May 2018, the Scottish Parliament Information Centre stated that, in real terms, the local government revenue settlement decreased at a much faster rate between 2013-14 and 2017-18 (-7.1 per cent) than the Scottish government revenue budget (-1.8 per cent).

This was corroborated by the Accounts Commission in its 2018 and 2019 reports, which show that council revenue funding from the Scottish government fell by 9.6 per cent in real terms between 2010-11 and 2018-19. Furthermore, revenue funding to support specific government policies will increase from 6.6 per cent of total revenue funding in 2018-19 to 12.1 per cent in 2019-20.

Scottish government funding that must be spent on specific policy initiatives, such as the PEF, now makes up an increasing proportion of total revenue funding, which means there are limitations on where councils can make savings. And the Accounts Commission showed a reduction in core revenue funding to local authorities of between 4.4 per cent (Midlothian) and 15.4 per cent (Western Isles) between 2013-14 and 2017-18.

Failing to meet local need

Local authorities’ body Cosla has said that so much of the budget being directed towards Scottish government policy priorities “prevents local government responding to local need”. It warned that resources available for existing services had decreased, and that the impact on jobs and services could be “significant” (see bit.ly/BudgetCosla).

Local authorities have made savings and changes to services affecting other areas of policy and practice - and therefore on children and their families. Figures show a total of 28,142 full-time-equivalent jobs have been cut by councils since 2010, for example. But job losses are only part of the story; there is evidence of council workers choosing to work fewer hours to “save” their own - or indeed their colleagues’ - jobs.

This brings us to the contradiction mentioned above. The aim of the Scottish Attainment Fund is laudable, but it does not get to the root of the problem: poverty itself. In fact, as the budget settlement shows, the creation and disbursement of the fund could actually be adding to poverty. We are on the horns of a dilemma: on the one hand, the government is allocating more funds, while on the other, councils’ core budgets are being cut.

Councils are often left with few options other than cutting hours and jobs. The losses include cleaners, dinner ladies, janitors and support staff. Evidence suggests these workers are mostly local women who often have various low-paid contracts. It is not unusual to find these women cleaning the school in the morning, then moving on to a community centre in the afternoon. Sometimes, they are the only working adult in the family. More significantly, they are the mothers and grandmothers of the children in schools. By cutting these jobs, the system is driving children and families further into poverty. And research shows that a major factor determining a child’s chance of success lies in the experiences of their mothers and maternal grandmothers.

To close the attainment gap, we need to focus on raising attainment and reducing poverty. A Scottish government report on poverty statistics, published in March, shows that one in five people are living in relative poverty: more than 1 million people are below the poverty line, 240,000 of them children.

There have been calls for the Scottish government to do more to alleviate poverty. Douglas Hamilton, chair of the Poverty and Inequality Commission, said that if the government was serious about addressing poverty, it should be making full use of powers to reduce housing costs, improve earnings and enhance social security.

Recent inspection and Scottish government reports show that education authorities and Challenge schools are using Attainment Challenge funding effectively to improve the educational attainment of children living in SIMD 1 and 2. Our headteachers and schools are using PEF in a variety of ways to mitigate the impact of poverty on their children.

The system is built on individual schools deciding what works best for their children in their context, which has been universally welcomed. Most PEF plans include a planned spend for additional teachers and support posts. However, the reality of the situation is that fewer and fewer of these posts are available, and this may in part have contributed to the underspending evident in the 2017-18 PEF figures.

The shortage of teachers, educational psychologists and other specialists could be impeding overall success. To date, there is little collated data on the specifics, or impact, of spending by individual schools or by local authority areas. Anecdotally, however, schools say that, towards the end of the financial year, they are searching around for things to spend PEF money on, to use up their allocation; this cannot be the best use of public funds.

Schools have an important role in closing the attainment gap, but this should be only one aspect of a coherent social policy.

Professor Walter Humes, from the University of Stirling, recently suggested that current leaders were suffering from “the parochialism of the present” and failing to consider what might be learned from past experience (see bit.ly/ProfHumes). He directed his criticisms at Curriculum for Excellence, but they could equally apply to closing the attainment gap.

How to achieve lasting results

Scotland has a rich history of evaluation and critique of social policy. In the 1970s, the old Strathclyde region broke new political ground by placing multiple deprivation at the heart of its priorities. A series of documents and policies were enacted during the 1980s and 1990s. The founding principles for the strategy were the need for flexibility, joined-up thinking and “the will and systems to effect change” (see bit.ly/YoungRpaper).

The Strathclyde strategy did not focus on a single issue, but took account of the fact that people live in communities, groups and families, that they interact with each other and should not be separated. The lessons from Strathclyde are that a social policy to tackle “social exclusion” needs to:

• Be resourced with mainline money - programmes that are short-term or characterised by uncertainty make success less likely.
• Upskill staff and communities to make the strategy successful.
• Have clear targets and continual monitoring of the effectiveness of action taken in relation to these.
• Be realistic about the time required. There are no quick fixes or silver bullets - changes in skills and behaviour, and in organisational forms, cannot be achieved in fewer than 20-30 years.

Could we apply these lessons to a new social strategy to reduce poverty? Professor Douglas Robertson, from the University of Stirling, has suggested that looking back over 80 years of regeneration in Scotland is akin to Groundhog Day, as many communities involved in initiatives and additional funding packages have changed little. He notes that deprived places, identified in the latest SIMD, are similar to those identified in previous editions dating back to 2004.

Of the 976 data zones among the 15 per cent most deprived in SIMD 2012, about three-quarters were also in the 15 per cent most deprived in all previous editions. Yet, the government is using SIMD to allocate funding from the Attainment Fund - when we know that this instrument is too blunt to get to the heart of the matter.

Scotland has a degree of cohesion and consensus around the problems facing us and ambitions for our people. In June 2018, the Scottish government and Cosla launched their revised National Performance Framework; all councils signed up to the priorities and vision this set out. There is a strong focus on increased wellbeing, improved outcomes and sustainable economic growth that benefits all of society.

There have been many successes, highlighted in various reports, showing that some children and young people are benefiting from Attainment Challenge and PEF initiatives. But these are not universal and are not enough to reduce the wider impact of poverty. The best political and civic leaders, headteachers and teachers in Scotland do not use poverty as an excuse for underachievement, but we do spend too much time posturing rather than finding solutions.

There is agreement about the challenges. So, let us have a collective approach to resolving them - this is too important to leave to individual schools or local authorities. If we work together, we could yet make Scotland the best place in which to grow up, live and work.

Isabelle Boyd is an educational consultant. She previously worked as a local authority assistant chief executive and as a secondary school headteacher

This article originally appeared in the 31 May 2019 issue under the headline “Tackling the pupil equity paradox”