Social mobility blocked by geographic gulf in tackling education gap

● Study says attainment by poorest depends on where they live ● Controversial new figures used to draw up league table

A new report has exposed the gulf between local authorities in tackling poor educational attainment among school pupils from Scotland’s most deprived neighbourhoods.

Figures published by the UK Social Mobility Commission (SMC) reveal big differences between councils in tackling the attainment gap that divides the life chances of the most deprived young people from their better-off peers.

In parts of the country, the reading and writing performance of pupils from the wealthiest areas is almost a third better than those from the poorest areas, while in other local authorities the gap is negligible. Opposition parties and education unions said the figures demanded further action on from ministers.

The SMC report ranks local authorities by the average gap in reading and writing attainment in P1, P7 and S3.

At P1, the deprivation gap in the proportion of pupils reaching the expected level was almost 34 per cent in Highland, the worst-performing area. At P7, Aberdeenshire came bottom of the table, with an attainment gap above 40 per cent. And Aberdeenshire saw the biggest difference at S3, of 40 per cent.

However, the tables are likely to spark controversy as they were put together using Scottish Government attainment data published last year based on “teacher professional judgements” of pupils’ standards. The report authors sounded a note of caution over the “experimental data”.

New standardised assessments are being rolled out that will measure pupils’ results in key areas, but First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has pledged that data will not be used to create school league tables.

The SMC report concluded: “Education and employment outcomes vary widely across Scotland – with deprived, postindustrial areas tending to report lower outcomes, while affluent rural areas tend to report higher outcomes.

“Even within authority areas, there are large gaps in outcomes between the most deprived and least deprived parts of the area.”

Tom Mason, Scottish Conservative MSP for the North East, said: “Nicola Sturgeon has repeatedly said that reducing the attainment gap is her top priority. To date, there is no sign that this is the reality.”

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the EIS teaching union, said: “Adequate numbers of teachers, smaller class sizes, the expansion of free nursery education with minimum access to a qualified teacher for all two-, three- and four-year-olds, and appropriate levels of additional support for pupils who need it, are what is required to improve the educational and life chances of all our young people.”

The SMC report highlighted the opportunity gap across Scotland in a number of areas. The poverty gap in university admissions is widest in Stirling, where just 10.2 per cent of pupilsfromthepoorestneighbourhoods enter higher education, compared with 64.8 per cent in the richest areas.

In East Renfrewshire and Dumfries and Galloway, 30 per cent of employees are paid less than the living wage of £8.75 per hour, more than double the proportion in Edinburgh. In Edinburgh and East Dunbartonshire, just over 40 per cent of jobs are in managerial or professional roles, almost twice the proportion in Dundee, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Dumfries and Galloway or Moray.

Despite being among the best-paid parts of Scotland,

0 Larry Flanagan of the EIS teaching union said more teachers and better support for pupils is needed

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