If the attainment gap is to be eradicated, reality is required

After yesterday, some pupils will be breathing a deep sigh of relief, whilst others are disappointed. But all should be immensely proud of having the courage to be tested in the first place.

It takes grit, resilience and determination to sit an exam diet, all of which are vital qualities for the rest of life. That is consistent with the Scottish Government’s vision for education, which is to equip young people with the knowledge and skills to be responsible citizens.

Our gratitude should also go to our teachers, who do our society a great service by investing in our young people.

Good education is the key to everything we seek to achieve as a nation

It can break the cycle of generational poverty, vastly improve people’s health and wellbeing and supercharge our languishing economy.

The Government’s mission also aspires to ensure equity across communities, so that every child has the same opportunity to succeed, irrespective of where they were born. Equality of opportunity is the birth-right of every child.

It is an inalienable right. But in Scotland, we have much further to go, if the attainment gap is anything to go by. That aspiration of equity should be the metric by which we measure the value and worth of education policy.

Covid has made this even more difficult. Findings by the National Literacy Trust confirm that students from the least disadvantaged areas were less likely to fall behind with their education during the series of lockdowns than those in the most disadvantaged areas.

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The success of home schooling was partly determined by parental capacity to invest time and energy, as well as the available space and resources at home.

A study by University College London quantified that children from the least disadvantaged homes lost much less teaching time than those from the most disadvantaged homes, with a quarter of pupils receiving no schooling at all.

Over the almost three years of the pandemic, this clearly had a colossal impact on a generation of pupils, entrenching and worsening inequalities.

Refocusing on the pursuit of high standards and simplifying the purpose of education can undo some of the damage of Covid.

Excellent state education is undoubtedly the most effective means of creating a level playing field for our young people, so that their aspirations and ambitions are never hindered by family income or place of birth.

No child can choose the circumstances into which they are born, but we can equip them through education in such a way that makes those circumstances irrelevant to their hopes and dreams. This is perfectly achievable.

It is far from a novel approach

In fact, it is one that Scotland pioneered over the centuries, ensuring that the plough boy could read just as well as the son of the Laird and go on to achieve great things. Our universities would take the best and the brightest, not just the posh and landed.

University graduates and successful entrepreneurs could boast of their origins in small villages, poor homes and urban slums.

Education opened up new avenues to learn and excel. It did so through excellent provision of education which aspired to high standards of numeracy and literacy. It did not seek to be inclusive by focusing on the lowest common denominator.

Instead, it bred aspiration, ambition and the pursuit of excellence – that was open to all. That’s why our small nation, of only a few million people, could export disproportionately high numbers of talented and skilled workers, schooled at Scotland’s finest academic institutions.

We have much to learn from the ways of old, as the Scottish Government commits to closing the attainment gap. But it starts with a bucket of cold reality to rein in the overheated rhetoric of political debate which has characterised education policy.

Education has sadly become a political football in an empty stadium, because everybody with a stake in the game has gone home.

I’ve no doubt that in the coming days opposition parties will use yesterday’s results to criticise the number of exam passes, whether the figures go up or down. They will lament the funding spent on education, even if further financial commitments are made.

They’ll call for more spaces for pupils in further and higher education without interrogating the nature of these spaces. They are right to scrutinise and demand answers to all these important points.

But in the heat of battle, we could miss the juggernaut that is fast approaching us.

Our young people are competing, not with each other or with last year’s cohort, but with their peers across the world. In an increasingly globalised economy, we are deeply affected by labour markets and skills systems in other countries.

We need to invest in our young people to be adaptable to an ever changing economy, with excellent competency in literacy and numeracy. Scotland’s young people must be equipped not just to get exam results for their preferred courses or jobs, but to excel in the international labour market.

That includes literacy and numeracy skills at the highest levels, as well as the knowledge and skills necessary to be responsible citizens.

Exam results are undoubtedly important, but they don’t tell you anything about how Scotland’s standards compare to international norms.

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I am relieved that the Education Secretary has agreed to improve our data collection about standards in our schools.

Hard, cold figures are needed to break through the political impasse that exists in the Parliament. They will help us prioritise any future reforms so that the education system can adapt and focus its energies on the initiatives that will most effectively equip our children.

We can’t measure everything, nor can we teach everything. Schools don’t exist to solve all of society’s woes. One of politicians’ favourite suggestions (I’ve used it myself) is that the solution to a particular societal problem is to include it in the curriculum.

Teachers are wonderful, but they can’t pick up the slack for the rest of society 

That view is consistent with the OECD’s assessment which praised the Curriculum for Excellence but concluded that the workload on teachers was burdensome and overly complex.

Pursuing excellence means simplifying the purpose of education, freeing it from the policy initiatives that don’t meet that purpose even if it comes at political cost. I have great confidence in the Education Secretary, Jenny Gilruth.

As a former teacher who knows the system from the inside, I’m sure she’ll be guided by the northern star of better outcomes for all our young people, irrespective of where they live.

The risk is that the political debate draws education reform down rabbit holes and up alleyways. We need to show the same grit, determination and resilience as our young people who received their results yesterday and focus on what matters.