Meeting of the Parliament 13 December 2023
Last week saw the publication of the programme for international student assessment, or PISA, statistics. They are a four-yearly analysis of almost 700,000 15-year-old pupils, across 81 countries, who are studying maths, science and reading. The PISA statistics are generally seen as the gold standard. The results held some deeply uncomfortable truths for Scotland, with scores in those subjects being at an all-time low.
Indeed, the scores have fallen since the last report in 2018 and are lower than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average scores in maths and science. The drop from 2018 was 18 points in maths, 11 points in reading and seven points in science. As Professor Lindsay Paterson of the University of Edinburgh put it,
“A change of 20 points is approximately equivalent to one year of mid-secondary schooling. So these falls correspond to nearly a year in mathematics, over six months in reading, and a term in science.”
However, crucially, that is not simply a reflection of some of the particular circumstances of the past four years, because they also show that Scotland’s science score was down 14 points from that of 2015 and is significantly lower than that of the United Kingdom as a whole. In maths, the score has dropped by 20 points since 2015 and is significantly lower than that of the rest of the UK. Our reading score was 33 points shy of where it stood in 2000 and is at its lowest-ever level. I will quote Alex Massie. He said:
“Fifteen-year-olds are producing the kinds of scores that would have been expected from 13-year-olds a generation ago.”
Of course, some people suggest that PISA is only one study. It is, but we must remember that it is virtually all we have. Rather than address what appeared to be the early signs of falling education standards, the Scottish Government decided to withdraw from the trends in international mathematics and science study and the progress in international reading literacy study more than a decade ago. The scrapping of the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy in 2016 led this Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee to conclude, in 2019, that
“The lack of baseline data means no meaningful conclusions on upward or downward trends can be reached, at a time of reform within Scottish education.”
Although I welcome the re-entry of Scotland to PIRLS and TIMSS, the data will not be available until 2026—20 years on from the previous measurements, which is a problem because, although it is trite to say it, what gets measured gets fixed. Even absent those measurements, surely we, as a Parliament, have a duty to try to come up with solutions. I look forward to colleagues across the chamber setting out what they feel are the underlying issues and their solutions.