Rachael Lowrie |
Nicola Sturgeon puts education at the top of her to do list.
Nicola Sturgeon, current First Minister of Scotland and the leader of the Scottish National Party, has recently made education her top priority at the recent cabinet meeting on the 1st of September.
She was quoted saying: “When it comes to the education of our young people and to improving attainment, and closing the attainment gap, what matters to me is what works.”
The connotations to this statement are incredibly extensive. Since Sturgeons’ inauguration she has made it clear that a change is needed in Scottish school standards.
Sturgeon apprehends that the attainment gap between pupils from poorer backgrounds and those from better off families is wearily wide and is adamant on closing this vast gap. How does the First Minister plan to achieve this task? Well, there’s been a four year £100 million attainment fund constructed to improve literacy and numeracy, aimed at primary schools.
Sturgeon has announced that her course of action is to introduce uniform national testing back to Scottish schools to track children’s progress. She told MSPs at Holyrood that the new tests would be introduced for Primary one, four and seven pupils, as well as S3. I see this as a positive step forward in not only closing the attainment gap but also potentially help schools in the early detection of childhood learning difficulties as 89% of children with moderate learning difficulties and 18% of children with profound learning difficulties are educated in mainstream schools.
Although there are many positively exciting aspects to Surgeons big idea, Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie warned that the move could lead to a return of the crassly antagonistic school league tables in Scotland and “Lead to inaccurate and unfair comparisons between schools”. Sturgeon said she did not want to create “crude league tables” but that it is essential that more information is discovered about performance in primary and lower secondary school in order to actualize her goal of closing the attainment gap between rich and poor.
