Recent data on Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) achievement levels confirms the continuing impact of the Covid pandemic on education, a teaching union boss has said.
EIS general secretary Andrea Bradley has warned that the CfE levels figures do not reveal the full picture, as they do not show how the pandemic affected pupils’ engagement with education or their health and wellbeing.
When the data was published in December, the Scottish government said it provided evidence of a “real recovery from the pandemic” but acknowledged that it also showed worrying attainment gaps.
Ms Bradley said today that the Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL) data for 2021-22 “demonstrates clearly that the impact of the pandemic is still evident in our schools”.
She highlighted a “significant and worrying increase in the number of pupils recorded as having an additional support need (ASN) in mainstream settings”, yet “very concerningly, these increases have not been matched by corresponding increases in core funding for education”. Instead, class teachers are “continuing to plug the gaps in provision arising from a lack of specialist ASN teachers and from the systemic underfunding of key frontline support services”.
Ms Bradley is concerned that 46 per cent of primary pupils with ASN achieve expected literacy levels, against a national figure of 79 per cent; in numeracy, it is 57 per cent for ASN pupils against 86 per cent nationally.
Meanwhile, 31 per cent of S3 students with ASN achieve the literacy level against a national figure of 58 per cent; in numeracy, it is 42 per cent for ASN pupils against 71 per cent nationally.
Ms Bradley said: “A similar story is evident for children and young people from the most deprived backgrounds, with the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) registering the magnified impact of the disruption on disadvantaged learners and, correspondingly, the need for proportionately stronger interventions there.”
She said that S3 pupils’ attainment gap in literacy had increased in 2021-22 to 16.3 percentage points, the largest such gap observed since 2016-17.
In primary schools, meanwhile, the poverty-related attainment gaps had narrowed slightly in both literacy and numeracy compared with 2020-21, but remained wider than in 2018-19.
Ms Bradley said: “With one in three pupils in our mainstream schools with ASN and figures clearly rising, the Scottish government must act accordingly now and commit significant additional core funding to enable schools to deliver on the policy aim of ‘getting it right for every child’.”
When the ACEL data was published last month, education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said: “These figures demonstrate a real recovery from the pandemic and underline our progress towards tackling the poverty-related attainment gap, and achieving excellence for all of Scotland’s children and young people.”
She added: “However, there is no room for complacency. I recognise that attainment levels are still largely below pre-pandemic levels and the publication of local ‘stretch aims’ by local councils last week sets out clear plans to significantly narrow the poverty-related attainment gap in the years ahead.”
