The National Improvement Framework for Scottish Education supports the Scottish Government’s ambition to achieve excellence and equity for every child in Scotland, with a duty placed on local authorities to actively address the poverty-related attainment gap.
In November 2022, Shetland Islands Council published its annual report for 2021-22 and a forward plan highlighting key priorities for the incoming year.
During 2021-22, the council made good progress against the priorities ‘Improvement in attainment, particularly literacy and numeracy’, ‘Improvement in children and young people’s health and wellbeing’ and ‘Improvement in employability skills and sustained, positive school leaver destinations for all young people’.
The council made satisfactory progress against the national priority ‘Closing the attainment gap between most and least disadvantaged children’.
The annual report makes reference to progress and challenges:
- In the primary broad general education, more children have achieved the expected levels in literacy and numeracy attainment. Almost all young people are achieving the expected levels of literacy and numeracy at the end of secondary 3.
- In the senior phase, S4-S6, learners have attained well across National Qualifications. % A-C passes at National 5 (+5.8 percentage points), Higher (+0.6 percentage points) and Advanced Higher (+6.9 percentage points) were above the national average.
- The Council continues to offer a range of non-graded at courses at National 2, 3 and 4 levels, helping to support all our young people gain maximum attainment in their learner journey.
- A higher percentage of school leavers have gained level 4 and/or level 5 literacy and numeracy. Shetland’s performance exceeds the virtual comparator, other northern alliance authorities and the Scottish average.
- Pupils have continued to engage in the National e-learning offer (Ne-LO) which included live, recorded and supported learning.
- The Digital Learning and Teaching Strategy was published. Staff and pupils are getting better access to the hardware and software required for high quality learning and teaching and digital technology. Digital device and connectivity solutions continue to be offered to children and young people across Shetland to support learning at home and at school.
- Since 2019, the attainment gap in primary literacy has remained stable while the attainment gap in primary numeracy has widened.
- Pupil Equity Funding (PEF) is funding provided directly to Head Teachers to support children and young people who experience poverty related barriers to learning. A range of factors including COVID-19 and recruitment challenges has resulted in an underspend for 2021/22.
- Shetland Islands Council has received Strategic Equity Funding (SEF) to accelerate the work to close the poverty related attainment gap. The current recruitment timeframe means that is unlikely that all of this funding will be allocated this year.
- The health and wellbeing of staff and pupils has remained the number one priority through another school session disrupted by COVID-19.
It is an enduring challenge to articulate progress made in closing the poverty-related attainment gap in Shetland. The reference in the National Improvement Framework to ‘the least and most deprived areas’ assumes an urban concept of deprivation. The Scottish Government has acknowledged that this does not apply well to places like Shetland. While many other local authorities are delivering interventions to close the gap between pupils in SIMD 1-3 and 4-10, the absence of any lower SIMD area pupils in Shetland, coupled with the small number of learners in some SIMD zones each year, creates additional challenges for our schools in identifying the gap and then taking steps to close it.
Ongoing recruitment challenges continue to place pressure on schools and the core Quality Improvement Team, impacting on the ability to realise the strategic ambitions. In some subject areas, such as Craft and Design Technology, vacancies have been particularly difficult to fill, reflecting the regional and national picture.
For 2022-23, there is a new fifth priority, ‘Placing the human rights and needs of every child and young person at the centre of education’.