It is a warning you hear a lot in education: do not try to replicate wholesale an intervention or a programme that has worked elsewhere - on anything from pupil attendance to literacy - and expect it to have the same impact in a different school, serving a different community.

This is certainly true, says David Gregory, an Education Scotland strategic director, when it comes to closing the attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils.

“What is working in one school may not work in another school, for various reasons,” he told last week’s meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee, which was taking evidence on the Scottish Attainment Challenge.

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According to Dr Gregory, underpinning every successful intervention is the same “process”:

• Clear leadership from the headteacher.
• A clear understanding of the data.
• A clear plan, with measurable outcomes.
• Support for and empowerment of the staff, along with appropriate professional learning.
• An evaluation that takes on board the original goals and which includes the family and the community.

“Every time we see something working, that process underlies it,” said Dr Gregory of the combined impact in schools of these five essentials.

Putting ‘strong evidence’ into practice

Dr Gregory made his comments in response to SNP MSP Keith Brown, who had asked what the government had learned from what had gone well in relation to closing what is described officially in Scotland as the “poverty-related attainment gap”.

In 2024, Jim McCormick, chief executive of The Robertson Trust - which offers funding to charities that support people and communities living with poverty or trauma - said there was “strong evidence” on how to close the attainment gap.

However, Scotland needed to get better at putting it into practice, rather than having many projects operating in isolation - or, as Mr McCormick put it, letting “a thousand flowers bloom”.

A detailed analysis of almost a decade of the Pupil Equity Fund on Scottish schools is expected soon.

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