Closing schools attainment gap will take ten years, says Swinney

Education Secretary John Swinney yesterday admitted that it would take a decade to close the attainment gap in Scotland’s classrooms.

Appearing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Mr Swinney made the admission when he reflected on his own school days at Forrester High in Edinburgh during the 1970s and 1980s.

Mr Swinney said that of 120 pupils in his year only eight, including himself, finished sixth year.

Mr Swinney went on to study at Edinburgh University but 0 John Swinney: ‘beginning to see that gap narrowing’

most of his peers “left at the end of fourth year with poor qualifications”.

Mr Swinney said the attainment gap that sees children from better-off backgrounds outperform their poorer counterparts had remained since then.

“Essentially that gap has persisted over the course of those years,” Mr Swinney told his audience at the Gilded Balloon Theatre, where he was appearing at Matt Forde’s Political Party Podcast.

“What we are focussed on is closing that gap as quickly as we possibly can. Now, we think it will take us ten years to do that but that is what we are focussed on doing. We are focussed on doing that by very direct interventions in addressing the obstacles to learning.”