Meeting of the Parliament 23 May 2018
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I had not forgotten, and I rise to move the amendment in my name.
This is an important issue, but it is not a new one. The narrowing of the curriculum and the fall in attainment in S4 was raised by Kezia Dugdale in May 2015 at First Minister’s questions and again in June of the same year. The evidence, which has been meticulously gathered from official sources and collated and analysed by Jim Scott, existed even then. However, the First Minister chose not to listen. She tried to suggest that Professor Scott did not know the difference between enrolments and pupil numbers. She wrote the whole thing off as “constant SNP bashing.” However, it was not, and three years on, the evidence has mounted on narrowing of the curriculum in our schools.
The number of schools allowing pupils to study more than six subjects in S4 has fallen to 43 per cent, and only 11 per cent now allow eight subjects. The numbers are stark, but so are the consequences: that narrowing of the curriculum is pushing some subjects out of schools altogether. Nothing will convince me that that was an intended consequence of the great education debate or of curriculum for excellence.
As Liz Smith said, modern languages are being particularly badly affected. It is no coincidence that last year the number of young people who gained a language qualification was 50 per cent lower than the number who did so in 2007. Gaelic, to which all of us in Parliament committed our support only a couple of weeks ago, was one of the subjects that Professor Scott identified as being at risk years ago.
This time, the education secretary has countered with an amendment of positive statistics that are true, but which hide, rather than contradict, the problem. High-achieving pupils who are going to do five or six highers will still do five or six highers; the point is that they will be choosing those highers from a narrower S4 base and their chances of doing three sciences or two modern languages are being undermined, or even denied in some schools, which has a knock-on effect on university course choice.
As for the rather contrived statistic in the Government amendment about the faster increase in
“the proportion of young people in the most deprived areas getting one or more qualifications at ... levels 4, 5 and 6”,
it is true, but it is driven largely by the fact that more pupils at the wealthier end move on to level 7 qualifications.
As has been pointed out, the number of exam passes by S4 pupils has fallen by 140,000 since the new exams were introduced. The number of national 5 entries per learner has declined by 20 per cent, and the pass rate for national 5 has fallen from 91.3 per cent in 2013 to 79.5 per cent. Those who leave school with only national 4 and 5 qualifications can choose and sit fewer subjects, and they are achieving fewer passes.
The very SQA tables from which Mr Swinney’s figure is derived show that since 2013 the percentage of pupils who leave school with no qualifications at all is rising, especially in the lower-income deciles. It is not a big rise, but it is the reversal of a 50-year historical trend. Comprehensive schools, awards for all and standard grades turned a school system that had left 70 per cent of leavers with nothing into one of which we could be proud, and in which every pupil’s achievement was recognised. Those achievements matter. S4 leavers deserve the best from our schools, just as the high flyers with the higher pass rates do.
No one is arguing that there is a conspiracy. However, there are unintended consequences of the new exams coupled with teacher shortages and tight budgets, and those consequences are impacting on children who are at the wrong side of the attainment gap. The education secretary simply must face up to that.
Parents do not understand what is going on: they do not understand why their children’s choices are so constrained and they do not understand why choice depends so heavily on the school that their child attends. My constituency has few high schools—five—but some of those schools offer six subjects at S4, some offer seven and some offer eight.