Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 24 March 2021
A bit of contrition from the First Minister might be in order, after the failures of her Government have been exposed, rather than a lack of honour or indeed any contrition. I do not know how the Deputy First Minister can say that he is concerned about the words “catch up”, because there is simply no way that pupils who would otherwise have spent the entire year in class can have done anything other than fall behind, through no fault of their own or of their teachers, over the past 12 months. The only question is, “How far?”
While we respect the summer work, we want to know what else the Government will do to turn the situation around. It is not as if there was not already a serious problem in Scotland with a deeply entrenched attainment gap.
This week’s Audit Scotland report says that the attainment gap “remains wide” and that improvements are not happening quickly enough. It specifically says that those
“in the most challenging circumstances have been most affected”
by the impact of school closures, and that those same disadvantaged children have less access to remote learning and to online resources.
The Government has had years in charge of education, so why is progress on closing the attainment gap so slow?