Chamber and committees

I do not want to go into what comes next; I want to focus on how we got here. You have addressed the fact that the attainment gap exists elsewhere, but I want to know why it exists here and why the rest of the OECD report, which covered a whole lot of other areas in education as well, was so critical. Do we understand how we got here?

I accept all of that, but we are in—

I want to challenge your claim that things were getting better before the pandemic. In a number of indicators that I have looked at, the gap has widened. The gap in S3 literacy widened from 13.6 per cent to 13.8 per cent between 2016 and 2018. In the achievement of level 4 of the Scottish credit and qualifications framework, the gap widened from 6.5 per cent to 7.1 per cent between 2018 and 2019. The gap in the achievement of level 6 widened from 35 to 36 points in 2018-19. That was all before the pandemic, so why do you say that things were getting better?

Okay. My next question probably simplifies things too much, but what three things—that I could understand—have the biggest impact in the classroom to close the poverty-related attainment gap?

Is it that long term?

I was fascinated by what you said about the work of the attainment advisers. The feedback that I get from a lot of teachers is that they are exhausted as a result of the pandemic and that they still feel as though they are in the middle of the pandemic, because a lot of staff and kids are off sick. A lot of the children have fallen behind in relation to where teachers would expect them to be. On Monday, a teacher told us that they were frustrated by the latest idea coming along when they already had a mountain of work to do. I realise that the issue is probably much more sophisticated than that.

You are under pressure from us and others to improve attainment. At the same time, you are getting pushback from the schools, which are saying, “We’ve got enough to handle here without you coming up with new ideas.” How do you judge that? Can you explain what kind of discussion you would have to make sure that you do not overwhelm the schools, while driving forward improvement? Can you talk through that a little?

There has rightly been a focus on closing the poverty-related attainment gap, but are we lifting everybody up right across the school population? What is the effect of the challenge?

I know that the pandemic has affected things quite significantly, but I am interested in this claim that we were making progress before the pandemic. That difference was pretty marginal and the rate of progress slow—at that rate, it would take another 35 years to close the attainment gap. Surely we cannot be satisfied with that.

Yes. I want to know how we can be so confident that we are reducing the number of teachers on temporary contracts when the use of temporary contracts has been going on for years. It has been said that it was the additional funding throughout the pandemic that resulted in a growth in the number of temporary positions, but it was happening for years before that. How can we be confident that the number will not creep back up again in future years?

That was a really helpful explanation of how the system has evolved. I take two things from it. The first is about the listening and understanding that is going on, and the second is about the fact that headteachers are reaching beyond the school gates into the family home, which is a significant change.

The committee often looks at challenges and barriers, because we want to make the system better. In that light, I want to raise two particular issues. First, although school leaders and headteachers are central to making the system work, we have seen a shortage of headteachers in recent years and the emergence of more joint headships in some areas. Does that pose a challenge to improving the system further?

Secondly, can we get the right expertise when it is available, to meet the needs of the variety of pupils that we are trying to assist? Are the specialisms there?