Scottish Labour and Conservatives say decline is down to budget and teacher cuts

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Scottish ministers have been accused of failing to invest enough in education after pass rates in nearly all school qualifications fell for the fourth year in a row.

The Scottish Qualifications Authority said A-C passes in Higher grades, roughly equivalent to an A level, fell to below 75%, after four consecutive years of decline, while Advanced Higher grades also fell to their lowest pass rate since 2015.

The figures showed a slight increase of 0.7% in passes year on year for National 5s, the equivalent of an O level in England and Wales, but in National 4s, an award for students not academically suited to National 5s, they fell by 1.1%.

John Swinney, the Scottish education secretary and deputy first minister, said fluctuations in results were acceptable. “These are a strong set of results which show a degree of year on year variation expected in a high-performing education system with credible assessment,” he said.

Scottish ministers under fire as exam results decline again Read more

“If the pass rate only ever went up people would rightly question the robustness of our assessment system.”

That was angrily dismissed by Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservatives, who said there was now an established trend of declining results in schools, due entirely to cuts in teacher numbers, budgets and in subject choice.

Iain Gray, Labour’s education spokesman, said core teaching numbers were 3,000 lower than when the Scottish National party came to power in 2007, increasing the strain on teachers and schools. Multi-level classes, where teachers taught Higher and National grades in the same class, were now the norm.

“Swinney is trying to pretend this is just a statistical blip,” Gray said. “It isn’t. It’s a trend. He is really clutching at straws this year.

“What he’s desperately trying to avoid admitting what we’ve seen over the last four years is a fall in attainment with Highers – the gold standard of Scottish education.”

Compared with 2013, the year before substantial changes in teaching and exams came into force under Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) reforms, the number of entries for exams and awards have fallen by nearly 17%.

Total entries for all awards, including Skills for Work employability courses, fell from 670,568 in 2015 (when CfE was fully in place) to 636,085 this year. The only award to show a year-on-year improvement was in National 5 passes, but this year’s rate of 78.2% was the second worst figure since the award began in 2014, 0.7% up on last year’s record low.

Liz Smith, the Scottish Tories’ education spokeswoman, warned that these declines could have a significant knock-on effect on the economy, by reducing skill levels and employability. She said the results raised doubts about the CfE reforms.

“We have known for months that subject choice has been squeezed and that there have been deeply worrying downturns in some key subject areas which have a major impact on the economy,” Smith said.

“Mr Swinney has persistently refused to listen to what teachers, parents and young people are telling him. These results shame that complacency.”

Larry Flanagan, general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS), the country’s largest teaching union, said he too believed the drop in attainment meant Scotland was avoiding artificial grade inflation.

Teachers were producing good results under tough conditions, he said. “Scotland’s pupils and teachers deserve high praise for a sound set of results which have been achieved during a period of significant strain upon everyone within Scottish education,” he said.

“It is of great credit to the work of our schools, pupils and teachers that the diet has been successful, at a time when budgets have been declining and workload pressures increasing.”