Hansard

I welcome the opportunity to update Parliament on a range of evidence concerning the performance of Scottish education. Today sees the publication of the achievement of curriculum for excellence levels, commonly known as ACEL, for the academic year 2022-23.

ACEL reports on the proportion of all pupils in primary 1, primary 4, primary 7 and secondary 3 who have achieved the expected curriculum for excellence levels in literacy and numeracy. It is the most comprehensive national data set on attainment in literacy and numeracy, and it is predicated on teacher judgment. The proportion of primary pupils attaining the expected levels in literacy and numeracy has increased—that is the case for children from the most and the least deprived areas. The attainment gap in literacy in primary schools has decreased, and at secondary level there have been increases in attainment across the board while the attainment gap has reduced. It is further worth remembering that, this summer, the overall pass rates for national 5, highers and advanced highers were above pre-pandemic levels in 2019 and that the poverty-related attainment gap has narrowed.

I hope that everyone in the chamber welcomes the achievements of our pupils, their teachers and our support staff. Nonetheless, I do not shy away from the challenge presented by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s post-Covid edition of the programme for international student assessment, which is an international sample survey in which Scotland participates and which measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge to meet real-life challenges. However, that data set should not be read in isolation. To understand the accurate picture across our education system, we have to fully consider a range of different factors.

Today, the Government published the annual pupil, staff and early learning and childcare census, which provides a wealth of information, including teacher numbers, pupil to teacher ratios, the number of young people reported as having an additional support need, and attendance and exclusion rates. Taken in the round, the evidence shows that the pandemic has had a profound impact on the attendance and achievement of Scotland’s young people. However, I want to be clear with Parliament that the Government does not accept the trajectory based on attendance, behaviour or PISA. We must commit to real-terms improvements in Scotland’s education system for our young people, their parents and the future of this country.

Education can only improve the life chances of young people who are supported and encouraged by their parents or carers to attend. Since being appointed as cabinet secretary, I have expressed my concerns about the on-going impact of the pandemic in our classrooms. Figures published today show that our attendance rate in 2022-23 sat at 90.2 per cent, which shows a decrease from 92 per cent the previous year. Some councils have higher absence rates than others, and there is variation in certain year groups.

Anecdotal evidence of unrecorded absence from class continues to suggest that, although some pupils might be attending school, they are not necessarily present in class. That is not good enough. At my request, Education Scotland has undertaken work to better understand the current barriers and challenges experienced by children and young people and their families that influence school attendance and behaviour. Its report “Improving Attendance: Understanding the Issues” was published at the end of last month. Building on that work, I have tasked the interim chief executive of Education Scotland, Gillian Hamilton, to work directly with directors of education to drive improvements in attendance as a matter of priority. That will require local authority leadership.

The role of Scotland’s dedicated teachers is critical to improving our education system. Although the pupil to teacher ratio remains the lowest in the United Kingdom, at 13.2 per cent, figures that have been published today show a fall in teacher numbers of 0.3 per cent. Although that is a small change, Parliament will recall that the Scottish Government made an additional ring-fenced investment of £145 million to protect teacher numbers. It is therefore extremely disappointing that a number of local authorities did not choose to use the additional funding to protect their teacher numbers. Conversely, some local authorities went above and beyond to protect their teacher numbers. I thank them for that and for investing in better outcomes for their young people. We have written today to the local authorities where the number of teachers has reduced to seek an explanation, and I will meet the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to discuss the matter later this week.

Although the Government will, of course, consider those reductions on a case-by-case basis, I will continue to reserve the right to withhold funding allocated to protect teacher numbers where that has not been the case. Fundamentally, we cannot hope to improve attendance, behaviour or attainment with fewer teachers in our schools.

One issue that has been raised by PISA and in the recent behaviour in Scottish schools research—BISSR—is pupils’ use of mobile phones. As cabinet secretary, I cannot unilaterally ban mobile phones—that power rests with headteachers and local authorities, of course—but I want to examine all the evidence on that and encourage schools to take the action that they deem necessary. Therefore, we will work to provide refreshed guidance to schools on the use of mobile phones in schools as part of the joint action plan to respond to the BISS research. That will take a range of factors into account, including pupils’ personal circumstances—particularly those of young carers. However, our starting position is that headteachers are empowered to take the steps that they consider appropriate, and, if they see fit to ban mobile phones in schools, the guidance will support that.

I want to reflect directly on Scotland’s PISA results. In absolute terms, it is true that Scotland mirrored the overall international trend of a reduction in PISA scores in reading and maths between 2018 and 2022. We are not unique in that respect. As has been noted, the OECD has referred to this year’s results as the “Covid edition”. Covid impacted, and continues to impact, on educational outcomes. In Wales, Northern Ireland and England, the trajectory on scores is a downward one for maths and reading. Across the OECD, as was the case in 2018, Scotland is above the average for reading and similar to it for maths and science.

The challenge for Government is this: is average good enough? I do not think so.

Although it is true to say that PISA provides only a snapshot of data, the results should serve as a wake-up call to all Governments. I hope that the Parliament hears the gravity with which I am considering the results. The new post-Covid norm cannot be allowed to define the educational outcomes of the next generation.

To build on my direct engagement with the OECD last month, I will meet the OECD’s director for education and skills, Andreas Schleicher, next year to ensure that Scotland continues to learn from other countries and starts to improve her international standing on education once more.

It is worth reminding members that curriculum for excellence was endorsed by the OECD in 2021 as the right approach for Scottish education. However, I recognise the need to improve our curriculum in a planned and systematic way, as the OECD has recommended. We need to do so to ensure that it remains relevant and forward looking and that it ultimately supports high-quality teaching and learning. That is why we will begin a curriculum improvement cycle next year. That will include curriculum content, the role of knowledge, transitions between primary and secondary, and alignment between the broad general education and the senior phase.

My view is that maths education requires to be a central focus for improvement—indeed, it is critical when considering the 18-point reduction in Scotland’s PISA score. Maths will therefore be the first curricular area to be revised. I want that work to be led nationally by a maths specialist working alongside our national response to improving mathematics. The specialist will have a key role in the full-scale update to the maths curriculum, which will begin in 2024 and will be tested with Scotland’s teachers later next year. They will provide a key role in driving the improvements required and learning from the outputs from PISA and a range of other evidence sources to improve Scotland’s performance in maths.

Furthermore, to support the implementation of our new maths curriculum, the interim chief inspector has agreed that a maths national thematic inspection with a focus on teaching and learning will be taken forward in 2024, to report next autumn.

Finally, the Scottish Council of Deans of Education will convene its initial teacher education national maths group. That group will ensure that initial teacher education aligns with the latest developments in maths and numeracy.

On English and literacy, the national response to improving literacy is taking forward work on identifying priorities for improvement. I have asked the interim chief inspector to begin a thematic inspection of literacy and English nationally, to inform the work that is required to update and improve the literacy and English curriculum. Literacy and English will flow as the next priority for curriculum update following maths.

Children’s speech, language and communication is an area that has been particularly affected since the onset of the Covid pandemic. The Scottish Government has invested in a new team of speech and language specialists with a clear focus on supporting preventative work in speech and language development in the early years. The curriculum update will therefore require to embed learning on speech and language in reviewing our curriculum content, to better ensure progression and drive improvement.

As Lucy Crehan noted, the history of PISA can be traced back to an American President in the 1980s who was keen to drive national educational improvement and yet faced resistance from state-level governments. Thankfully, that is not the case in Scotland. Here, councils’ collective ambition to raise absolute attainment in literacy and numeracy and to narrow the attainment gap is reflected in their new three-year stretch aims for progress by 2025-26, which were also published today.

If those stretch aims are realised, compared to 2016-17 we would see overall attainment in literacy and numeracy increase by around 13 and 9 per cent respectively and the poverty-related attainment gaps in literacy and numeracy narrow by around 30 per cent over the lifetime of the Scottish attainment challenge. I am grateful to COSLA for the progress thus far, and I commit to working with our councils, in the spirit of the Verity house agreement, to drive the improvements that we need to see.

I recognise that the experience of education has changed for our young people, their teachers and parents and carers. Covid has had a profound impact on attendance, behaviour and achievement, but, fundamentally, we need to disrupt the PISA trajectory and drive improvements across school education. That will also be informed by working with our International Council of Education Advisers and with COSLA, national agencies and professional associations.

To that end, the next steps that I have set out today are part of the solution but they are not the whole picture, because I agree that a knee-jerk political response is not going to help our young people. Scotland is at an educational juncture. Perhaps radical reform to our qualifications system is the answer. Some argue persuasively that that is the case, and I look forward to returning to the chamber in the new year to debate those proposals more fully. However, others point to the need for improvement versus radical reform, recognising the extraordinary pressures that our teachers are working under. Working with them to plot a pragmatic route forward might just be the way.