Scotland knows what works when it comes to closing the attainment gap - but the ability to hold on to successful practice is “often weak”, according to the head of a charity focused on preventing and reducing poverty in Scotland.
Next year, it will be a decade since Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon made closing the attainment gap her top priority, saying she wanted to be judged on her education record.
Since, the Scottish government has continued to fund the Scottish Attainment Challenge to the tune of around £200 million a year. However, progress has been “limited”, as an Audit Scotland report put it in 2021.
Today Jim McCormick, chief executive of The Robertson Trust, identified what he sees as a key problem.
Speaking at an online MacKay Hannah conference this morning, he noted that Scotland had “strong evidence” about what worked when it came to closing the attainment gap - but the issue had been focusing on those things and delivering them “with fidelity”.
Dr McCormick said: “We have a strong evidence base on what works and what doesn’t work very well, for whom, and for where and when, around this complex challenge. One of the difficulties we’ve had in Scotland is that our infrastructure has not been strongly enough aligned around that evaluation evidence.
“We’ve had an approach to the attainment challenge in the early days - maybe less so today - which kind of says, ‘let a thousand flowers bloom and then let’s see what that adds up to’.”
‘Weak and uneven’ practice across Scotland
He added: “Sadly, of those thousand flowers many of them will wither and die no matter how beautiful they have been. So, our ability to hold on to successful practice is often weak and uneven across the country.”
Dr McCormick called for a focus on “proven approaches” and “strengthening the link between what we’re investing in and what the evidence base tells us”.
“The answer is not a thousand things, it’s a much smaller number of things that can be delivered with fidelity,” he said.
Dr McCormick and other delegates highlighted that closing the gap could not just be about what happens in school - something teachers have long argued.
However, he also pointed out that “there are still big variations in how children are faring” and “some places and some schools manage to beat the odds”.
He said: “If you’re from a poor family you are better off going to school in Inverclyde or West Dunbartonshire or North Lanarkshire, than Edinburgh, East Lothian or Highland.”
On average, across Scotland, half of students from the 20 per cent most deprived areas gained five or more National 5s or equivalent in 2022-23, according to figures used by councils to track progress - but in Edinburgh that figure fell to 45 per cent; in East Lothian 25 per cent and in Highland to 42 per cent.
Education secretary Jenny Gilruth highlighted the “wide degree of variation in results between our 32 local authorities” in the wake of the exam results this year and said she planned to meet with councils “to drive the improvements we all want to see”.
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