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The Herald Scotland
15-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
The SNP reduced education targets and hoped no one would notice
Earlier this week, The Herald exclusively revealed that the Scottish Government has slashed its own targets for 'closing the attainment gap'. Unsurprisingly, they were far from upfront about doing so, and if I hadn't spent ten years investigating this issue I probably wouldn't have caught it either. The first thing that grabbed my attention was a line in the new Programme for Government stating that the government hoped to cut the primary school attainment gap in literacy and numeracy by around 30% by 2026. That might sound ambitious, but as soon as I saw it I went into my files to find a spreadsheet I've been updating for years, and it confirmed exactly what I suspected: this was in fact an absolutely massive downgrade on the government's ambitions. Read more: Scottish Government slashes targets for closing primary school attainment gap You see, back in 2017, a couple of years after Nicola Sturgeon's infamous (and destructive) 'judge me on my record' speech, the government set very different targets. You've probably never seen them, and in fact very few people seem to even remember they ever existed. When I went to the government about all this, I even had to send the material to them because they didn't know about it! The original target was to reduce the primary school attainment gap by more than 70 percent – and that was supposed to have been achieved in the current school year. The reality, as I'm sure you'll be shocked to find out, is that they haven't even come close. Those aims were laid out in something called a National Improvement Framework, and the government's stated goal at that point was to get the gaps in literacy and numeracy down to just five percentage points. The new target of a 30 percent cut will leave gaps of 15 and 13 percentage points respectively. And that's assuming they were going to meet that target, which they're not. To make matters worse, the government have confirmed that the data showing whether or not this latest promise has been kept (stop laughing at the back) won't even be made available before the next Holyrood election, so none of you will actually have the opportunity to judge them on their record for closing the attainment gap. That – like promising improvements while scrapping the measurement systems already in place and setting up new ones to put things back to year zero – is a nice trick, if you can get away with it. In a sensible country with a properly functioning political system, all of this would be a major problem for First Minister John Swinney. That's not just down to the fact that he's now the man in charge, but also because he was in fact the Education Secretary back when those original targets were set, and oversaw an abject failure to even come moderately close to keep those promises. And now, in the top job, he has decided that the best thing to do is to cut the targets by more than half and hope that nobody really notices what's going on. What's more, he has recently been rebuked by the UK Statistic Authority because of the claims he has been making about the attainment gap, which – if we're being kind – have involved some incredibly selective use of statistics. But there's no reason to expect an acknowledgement of any of this, and you certainly shouldn't be holding your breath for an apology. Read more: Lessons to Learn | Have we tried this novel idea that will close the attainment gap? Instead, you should expect arrogance, because in truth that is what has underpinned the SNP's whole approach to this matter for a decade now. Actually stop and think about it all for a minute. We've had a full public education system for more than one hundred years in this country, the point of which is to narrow the gaps between rich and poor. Imagine what things would look like if we didn't have schools that were free at the point of use! Within that system, we've had teachers spending their entire careers not just saying that they'll narrow those gaps, but actually doing something about it. But apparently what we really needed was some passing interest from a few career politicians and their hand-picked advisers. Nobody who knows a single thing about education ever thought that the SNP were going to eliminate or significantly close the attainment gap, because no matter how much politicians want simple solutions and focus-grouped rhetoric to solve complex problems, it just doesn't work that way. Ministers and advisers either knew this and pressed on anyway (because they calculated that making promises would have a bigger political effect than failing to keep them) or they actually believed the claims that were being made (in which case, and I really do mean this, they're too stupid to be allowed anywhere near decision-making of any kind). But it doesn't actually matter much at this stage which is correct, because the effect is the same: a decade of empty rhetoric, wasted money (approaching £2bn by the end of this parliament), and thousands upon thousands of families being let down at best and cynically exploited at worst. So why, you might ask, are people like me even still paying attention to these targets? If they were always ridiculous (they were) and political in nature (absolutely), why keep asking questions and writing articles about them? Because somebody has to be held accountable for all of this, and that has never, ever happened. Nobody forced the SNP to make promises they would never, ever keep. Nobody forced them to poison the well of education discourse in pursuit of a few percentage points in the polls. Nobody forced them to crank up the pressure in classrooms to distract from political failures. But we were told to judge them on their record. You can get in touch with our education writers by email:
The Herald Scotland
15-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
'Shameless' SNP slash targets for closing the attainment gap
Officials have also confirmed that data showing whether or not the new target has been achieved will not be provided prior to the next Holyrood election. In 2015, then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon pledged to tackle the attainment gap – the difference in education outcomes between the richest and poorest pupils – as a matter of priority, insisting that she wanted to be judged on her record in this area. The following year, she promised to 'substantially eliminate' the gap, describing this as the 'defining mission' of the SNP government. In December 2017, a National Improvement Framework was published which included specific targets for closing the overall attainment gap as defined by a total of 11 metrics. This document included a foreword from First Minister John Swinney, who at that time was Education Secretary. At that point, the attainment gap in primary school literacy stood at 22 percentage points, with a target to cut this to just five percentage points by 2024/25. This would have represented a 77% reduction. The numeracy gap in 2016/17 stood at 18 percentage points (the NIF document incorrectly states 17 percentage points) and the target was also to bring this down to five percentage points – a 72% reduction – by the end of the current academic year. If achieved, the newly stated target of a 30% reduction would leave primary school attainment gaps of 15 percentage points for literacy and 13 percentage points for numeracy. According to the most recent official data, the primary school attainment gap in literacy has fallen by just 8.2% since 2016/17 and currently stands at 20.2 percentage points. For numeracy, the reduction in that time is just 0.9 percent with a current gap of 17.4 percentage points. The original set of attainment gap targets had also included interim aims for 2019/20. Although data for this year was not collected due to the impact of the pandemic, official figures show that the government was not on track to meet those goals. Asked to explain why ministers had now settled on a reduction target of just 30%, despite having previously published far more ambitious goals, a spokesperson explained that the number represents the estimated aggregation of other targets set by local authorities. They also confirmed that the data to determine whether or not the government has met its newly-stated target will not become available until December 2026, around seven months after the upcoming Holyrood election. In a further blow, the First Minister has also been rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) over claims that the attainment gap has been reduced by 60 percent since 2009/10. This figure relates only to a single measure of school leavers' destinations which was not part of the government's own definition of closing the gap within the National Improvement Framework. Sir Robert Chote, Chair of the UKSA, stated in a letter to Labour's Pam Duncan-Glancy that his organisation would expect the government to be consistent about the way in which it measures attainment gaps, and that claims of progress should 'reflect a reduction in more than one measure relating to attainment". He added: 'To maintain trust and confidence in their statements, Ministers should take care that when they claim progress of their policies it is by their own defined measures, or otherwise clearly explain the source of separate data so that it is readily accessible for policy experts and the public to understand. We have raised these matters with the First Minister's office.' The Scottish Conservatives' education spokesperson, Miles Briggs MSP, said that the government's decision to cut its own targets 'sums up the SNP's dismal record on the attainment gap.' 'They've not only failed to eradicate it – it has widened on their watch. Yet their response wasn't to tackle the issue, but to deny and deflect. 'Just last week, the UK Statistics Authority said that John Swinney was misleading the public about this, and now his government are attempting another sleight-of-hand. 'Watering down targets, in the hope that they finally might meet them, won't fool anyone. The SNP made, and broke, a promise and are now trying to rewrite history to cover up the fact that they have failed Scotland's most vulnerable students.' Scottish Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Willie Rennie MSP said: 'The SNP are shamelessly moving the goalposts because they know they have broken their decade-old promise to close the attainment gap. 'There are lots of issues that need addressed, from behaviour challenges to teachers stuck on supply lists and fundamental problems with the curriculum. But all of these have gotten worse on the SNP's watch. 'Nicola Sturgeon once said her party should be judged by its record on education. That record clearly shows the SNP have failed children across Scotland.' Scottish Labour Education spokesperson Pam Duncan-Glancy said: 'The SNP used to say closing Scotland's shameful poverty-related attainment gap was its defining mission, but it's clear this mission has been abandoned. 'The poorest children in Scotland have been let down the most by the SNP's mismanagement of Scottish schools. 'The SNP's time in government is defined by broken promises and missed targets, and this is one of their worst betrayals.' A spokesperson for the Scottish Government said: 'This Government has been consistently clear we are committed to closing the poverty related attainment gap. It is encouraging to see the gap between young people from the most and least-deprived areas meeting standards in literacy is at a record low in primary schools, and the attainment gap has reached record lows between secondary pupils achieving third level in literacy and numeracy. 'The national stretch aims from 2016/17 in the National Improvement Framework (NIF) cannot be compared with the current position, as they have been superseded by local stretch aims over a three-year period of 2023/24 – 2025/26. This approach was developed with local authorities for aims to be set locally to reflect local contexts following the pandemic, recognising that education is delivered and experienced locally. 'There is of course much more to do as schools navigate the lasting impact of the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis on children and young people experiencing poverty. That is why up to £200 million is being invested this year in the Scottish Attainment Challenge programme.'
