Have we tried this novel idea that will close the attainment gap?

The Herald Scotland

01-05-2025

This week The Herald has published a special report on child poverty in Scotland.
The series has been led by my colleague Rebecca McCurdy, who wrote an extremely personal and powerful essay about her experience of growing up in poverty, and who has brought together a range of stories, including brand new data, to shine a light on the harsh reality for too many children in this country.
The Scottish Government is under pressure to increase the Scottish Child Payment (SCP) – a hugely successful new benefit – from £27.15 to £40 per week. According to experts this could lift thousands and thousands of children out of poverty and quite literally transform their lives.
But the government doesn't seem so keen. In an exclusive interview with The Herald, First Minister John Swinney suggested that raising the payment much further might disincentivise people to look for work. That response has, unsurprisingly, angered many.
Even if Swinney changed his mind, however, he'd still need to find the cash to pay for it, and as has been the case for a decade and a half now, we're being told that times are tough and there's not enough money to go around.
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So let's talk about money and how it goes around.
The Scottish Government currently spends about £130 million per year on a programme called Pupil Equity Funding, which it introduced as part of its pledge to eliminate (later downgraded to close, and then narrow) the 'attainment gap' between rich and poor pupils. Indeed, it is often referred to as 'anti-poverty funding'.
Schools receive £1225 per year for each child in receipt of free school meals and must ensure that it is used to deliver 'targeted support for children and young people (and their families if appropriate) affected by poverty.'
Ultimately, that PEF money is supposed to mitigate the consequences of poverty in an educational context, with schools introducing new support programmes, hiring new staff, bringing in new consultants, or buying new resources in pursuit of that goal. As it turns out, there's lots of money going around.
When you get right down to it, the plan here is to find clever ways to make sure that poverty doesn't follow pupils through the school gates and into the classroom or the exam hall.
There are lots of examples of schools using PEF money to very good effect, and plenty of examples of them using it to plug other funding gaps.
But what this scheme and the wider Scottish Attainment Challenge (total cost: £1.75 billion) definitely have not done is eliminate, close, or even meaningfully narrow the attainment gap.
So maybe we need to ask some potentially difficult questions.
Is spending hundreds of millions for each percentage point of progress really the best use of limited cash? Are there any other ways to spend that money that might have a bigger impact on people's lives, or broader society, or both?
Well here's one idea: instead of trying to mitigate the effects of poverty in schools by spending money on behalf of poor people, why don't we just mitigate the poverty itself by giving that money directly to poor people?
What if we tackled the scourge of poverty by just making people less poor?
This week The Herald has revealed that 80,000 children in Scotland are living in very deep poverty.
New figures from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation show that a higher proportion of young people are classed as being in the most extreme form of poverty than was the case in the mid-1990s, and that the current total is equivalent to every child currently living in Edinburgh.
If the government took the £130m Pupil Equity Fund and simply divided it up amongst the 80,000 poorest children in the country then each one would receive £1625 per year.
If the cash were instead added to their SCP, the amount their parents receive each week would more than double to £58.40.
That sort of increase could have an astronomical impact on the lives of children and their families.
It might even close the attainment gap.
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