Work to bridge schools gap following COVID-19

WORK to plug the attainment gap in Fife is continuing after levels dropped during the coronavirus pandemic.

Education chiefs say the gap in Fife “widened significantly” in 2019/20 when the first COVID-19 lockdown took place.

Councillors were due to get an update at a meeting of the education scrutiny committee on Tuesday, however, this will now take place next Friday after being postponed so members could pay their respects to Queen Elizabeth II.

In the report, executive director education and children’s services Carrie Lindsay said achievement levels had begun to recover but were still lower than in 2018/19.

She explained: “The poverty-related attainment gap was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting barriers to learning arising from reduced engagement with learning during periods of home learning, the challenges of ensuring effective support for homelearning and increasing levels of child poverty arising from the economic impact of COVID-19 and other factors.

“We remain ambitious in our target-setting, planning and improvement activity.

“The improvement required collectively by Fife schools during 2022/23 corresponds to an overall level of improvement that has been achieved previously and would result in a closing of the attainment gap to a level achieved immediately prior to the COVID pandemic.

“This represents an ambitious but achievable improvement goal for the coming year.”

Ms Lindsay said work to address the attainment gap across the Kingdom was taking place with further improvements required to close it for disadvantaged and vulnerable children.

“These groups are a focus for the improvement activity being undertaken within the Attainment Reform Strategy,” she stated. “To achieve significantlyimproved outcomes for these groups, we need to continue to embed sustainable approaches to improving attainment and closing the gaps that are firmly based on local, national and international evidence-based approaches.

“Building the capacity for improvement through high-quality professional learning and leadership development of staff will remain at the heart of our approaches, to support practitioners to make decisions about what works best for their learners and what has the greatest impact on their progress and achievement.

“The COVID pandemic has also had an adverse impact on the professional interactions needed to support moderation of CfE achievement levels within and across schools. This is an important focus of improvement activity, networking and collaboration during session 22/23 and beyond.

“Importantly, the voices of the children and young people, and their families, will continue to underpin our ongoing evaluation of what works best to improve the outcomes of all.”