Details of “significant” targets for all 32 Scottish local authorities to get primary attainment “back to and beyond” pre-pandemic levels have been published this afternoon.
Ministers have been warned, however, that this should not mark a shift in responsibility from national to local government.
Councils have set their own “stretch aims” for primary pupils’ literacy and numeracy levels, for senior-phase qualifications, and for the number of young people participating in education, training or employment.
Figures published in December 2021, for the 2020-21 school year, showed that primary pupils’ attainment in literacy and numeracy had hit its lowest level since 2017.
The government said today that councils’ stretch aims “demonstrate ambitions to work towards achieving the biggest two-year improvement recorded since the introduction of the Scottish Attainment Challenge”.
Education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said: “Given the effect of Covid-19 on children and young people’s achievement of Curriculum for Excellence levels in 2020-21, these collective aims represent significant local ambition for recovery back to and beyond the national position pre-pandemic, aiming to narrow the poverty-related attainment gap by over seven percentage points in both primary school literacy and numeracy compared to 2020-21.”
After Ms Somerville made a statement about the local stretch aims in the Scottish Parliament today, Labour education spokesperson Michael Marra said this should not be “an attempt to pass the responsibility to meet the SNP’s pledge [on ‘substantially eliminating’ closing the ‘poverty-related attainment gap’ by 2026] to local authorities”.
He added: “No one will forget that this was [first minister] Nicola Sturgeon’s pledge, her defining mission.”
The government said that work towards the stretch aims would be supported by its £1 billion Scottish Attainment Challenge, with £43 million in strategic equity funding allocated to local authorities this year.
Details of all the “stretch aims” can be found here.
