Key measures of literacy and numeracy in Scottish schools have gone in the right direction after record lows last year, but have still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Scottish government figures, published today for the 2021-22 school year, also show a narrowing of literacy and numeracy “poverty-related attainment gaps” compared with 2020-21 in primary schools, although in S3 - for which no figures were recorded in 2020-21 - the largest gap since 2016-17 was recorded.
Education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said that today’s figures from the Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL) report provided evidence of “a real recovery from the pandemic”, but Scottish Labour education spokesperson Michael Marra described the scale of the attainment gaps between rich and poor as “damning”.
Until 2021, government figures on whether pupils were hitting the expected level for their age and stage had tended to show small year-on-year improvements in pupils’ performance in literacy and numeracy.
Data published in December 2021 for the 2020-21 school year, however, showed that primary pupils’ attainment in literacy and numeracy was at its lowest since 2016-17, in the wake of the pandemic. Last December’s figures also showed the attainment gap at its widest since comparable figures were first published in 2016-17.
Data was not collected for any pupils in 2019-20 because schools were closed on the planned census date of 8 June 2020, as a result of Covid.
Today’s figures for 2021-22 show:
- 71 per cent of primary school pupils (P1, P4 and P7 combined) achieved the expected Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) level for literacy in 2021-22 (67 per cent in 2020-21 and 72 per cent in 2018-19).
- In numeracy, 78 per cent of primary school pupils achieved the expected CfE level in 2021-22 (75 per cent in 2020-21 and 79 per cent in 2018-19).
Figures for S3 students were not collected in 2020-21 as a result of what the government describes as “pressures on secondary schools associated with the cancellation of exams”. The percentage of S3 pupils achieving third level or better in 2021-22 was lower than in 2018-19 (the last year with comparable data) across all “organisers”.
Some 86 per cent of S3s achieved the expected CfE level for literacy in 2021-22 (88 per cent in 2018-19.); in numeracy, 89 per cent of S3s achieved the expected CfE level in 2021-22 (90 per cent in 2018-19).
Today’s new figures also show that the gap between the proportion of primary pupils (P1, P4 and P7 combined) from the most and least deprived areas who achieved the expected level narrowed in 2021-22 (compared to 2020-21) in both literacy and numeracy. However, for both literacy and numeracy, the gap remained wider than in 2018-19.
The gap between the proportion of primary pupils from the most- and least-deprived areas achieving expected levels has narrowed by 3.4 percentage points in literacy and 3.7 percentage points in numeracy, which, after the lows recorded in 2020-21, the government described as “the largest narrowing of the gap in a year since consistent records began in 2016-17”.
In 2021-22, the gap between the proportion of S3 pupils from the most- and least-deprived areas who achieved third level or better increased in both literacy and numeracy (compared with 2018-19, the last year with comparable data), and was the largest since the current methods of reporting this data started in 2016-17.
The government said: “This is not unexpected as the 2021-22 ACEL data for S3 pupils was the first data collected post-pandemic, whereas previous S3 results were reported before the Covid-19 outbreak.”
Ms 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.
“We know that the impact of the pandemic - compounded by the current cost-of-living crisis - means children and young people need our support now more than ever. We are determined to do all we can to ensure they can reach their full potential, including a record investment of £1 billion over this [2021-26] parliamentary term in the Scottish Attainment Challenge.”
Scottish Labour is calling on Ms Somerville to “make an urgent statement on the Scottish government’s latest failure to address the attainment gap between the most- and least-deprived pupils”.
Mr Marra, the party’s education spokesperson, said: “These damning figures show once more the Scottish government’s failure to get to grips with the impact the pandemic has had on our children’s learning.”
He added: “The attainment gap remains higher than before the pandemic for literacy and numeracy in primary school children, and the gap in numeracy is even wider than in 2016-17.
“This is yet another setback in what was once [first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s] defining mission, and another demonstration of the government’s failure to come up with any plan for addressing the impact of the pandemic.”
The Scottish government said that today’s figures “were produced in accordance with professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics”.
*The full Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels report for 2021-22 can be read here.
