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Author: Ferret Journalists
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| Two sets of statistics looking at Scotland’s education system have been released in recent weeks. |
| The most up-to-date Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data was published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in early December 2023, and was cited as evidence of declining educational standards in Scotland. |
| Then on December 12, the Scottish Government’s Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence levels (ACEL) report was released, with ministers claiming it showed record highs in pupil attainment. |
| So what’s happening with Scottish education? Ferret Fact Service explains. |
What did the PISA statistics show?
| PISA is an international survey done by the OECD, which assesses the skills of young people aged 15 years old in maths, reading and science. |
| It looks at the performance of the 38 OECD member countries, and the latest survey involved 690,000 pupils across the OECD taking part between October and December 2022. |
| Since the last time PISA was released in 2018, Scotland’s overall performance has decreased in maths and reading, and stayed similar in science. |
| In maths, Scotland’s score was similar to the OECD average, but lower than in all PISA surveys since they were first established in 2003. Scots pupils did better than the OECD average in reading, while in science the average score was similar to other countries, but worse than previous surveys between 2006 and 2015. |
Scotland’s score in maths and science was lower than the UK average, while in reading Scottish pupils performed similarly to the UK.
Investigation by The Ferret
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Why does the Vale of Leven Academy deliver results year after year that place the school in the bottom decile of Scottish schools?
Is it something to do with the school, something to do with the pupils and their background or both?
My suspicion is that many of the pupils do not want to learn or get little parental support to learn.
Genetics has a thing called regression to the mean. If it were not so the tall would get taller, the short would get shorter, and the thick thicker.
Put another way in general terms the well-to-do do not have a monopoly on inherently bright kids whilst lower ecio socio group have a monopoly on inherently thick kids. This means the intellectual gene pool is relative terms even.
So why the difference in results? It’s an interesting question.
But this begs a wider question of why the UK is declining in terms of its economy, whilst other countries are developing rapidly and overtaking the UK.