School attainment gap ‘remains wide’, watchdog warns – BBC, 23/03/21

The gap between what Scotland’s poorest and richest young people are achieving in school “remains wide”, a spending watchdog has warned.

Audit Scotland said progress on closing the poverty-related attainment gap since 2013/14 has been limited and “falls short” of ministers’ aims.

The watchdog also found inequalities have been made worse by Covid.

The Scottish government said it had made “significant progress” in the last five years.

It pointed to its own report, which showed that the gap between primary pupils from the most and least deprived areas achieving the expected level in literacy and numeracy had narrowed since 2016.

Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland, said: “Significantly reducing the attainment gap is complex but the pace of improvement has to increase as part of the Scottish government’s Covid recovery planning.