Scottish Attainment Challenge 2022 to 2023 - 2025 to 2026: child rights and wellbeing impact assessment

3. Will there be different impacts on different groups of children and young people?

The SAC is intended to be inclusive while targeted. Targeting resources, through the Attainment Scotland Fund (ASF), to support the health and wellbeing, educational attainment and outcomes of children and young people living in poverty, including those with protected characteristics. The Scottish Government has published a full Equality Impact Assessment which provides an in-depth analysis of the impact of the SAC on these protected characteristics; and a Fairer Scotland Duty assessment which considers the impact of SAC to reduce the 'inequalities of outcome' caused by 'socio-economic disadvantage'.

The way some Attainment Scotland Funding to local authorities is distributed has been reassessed in response to stakeholder feedback and the findings of the Audit Scotland report which highlighted "The way that (Attainment) funding has been targeted does not fully capture pupils living in poverty. The economic consequences of COVID-19 require a fresh assessment of the criteria for targeting poverty-related funds."^[1]

Recognising the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and poverty on children and young people in all local authorities across Scotland, and following a range of engagement with the education system and analysis of data; and in agreement with COSLA, £43 million in funding from the Attainment Scotland Fund currently distributed to 9 local authorities with the highest concentrations of deprivation based on SIMD (Challenge Authorities) will, from 2022/23, be distributed to all 32 local authorities. The distribution of funding can be found on gov.scot and is based on the DWP/ HMRC Children in Low Income Families (CILIF) dataset.

This dataset is based on robust administrative data from Universal Credit and Tax Credits systems and provides a consistent definition of child poverty across the country. Our method of allocation uses the 2019/20 relative low-income dataset, defined as children living in families with equivalised income of less than 60% of the UK median income before housing costs. This approach has important benefits relative to previous funding methods, such as that used by the Challenge Authorities programme.

Challenge Authorities were selected based on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). Data from SIMD is valuable when it comes to identifying deprivation for particular places, such as in which small geographic areas deprivation is most concentrated. However, many children in poverty live outside of these areas. Where small pockets of low-income families live in less deprived geographic areas, using SIMD ranking alone to allocate funding will not provide sufficient support to these families. As an example of this, the SIMD user guide highlights that around 2 out of 3 people on low incomes do not live in the 15% most deprived areas in Scotland. Using this place-based measure alone to allocate funding is particularly problematic for rural local authorities, where smaller settlement sizes mean geographic datazones are more likely to include a mix of households experiencing different levels of deprivation. Neither the Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands or Eilean Siar had any geographic areas in the most deprived quintile of SIMD areas, but together had around 2,000 children in poverty as shown by CILF data.

From 2022/23, the focus of the SAC will be to reflect the needs of individuals in each local authority. CILIF data shows that, of 206,000 children in relative poverty before housing costs across Scotland in 2019/20, 122,000, or 59% lived outside of Challenge Authorities. When developing the refresh of SAC, there has been a conscious decision to move away from a funding model that recognises only a subset of child poverty across Scotland, to a model that provides every local authority with the funding they need to implement targeted programmes that benefit children living in poverty in their council areas.

PEF will continue providing over £130 million directly to 97% of schools in Scotland, based on the number of P1-S3 pupils registered for free school meals, used as a proxy measure for socio-economic disadvantage. PEF allocations provide further resource to schools to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap and support recovery, recognising the additional challenges that schools and their children and young people face due to COVID-19. To help aid planning for the short and medium term – allocations will be fixed for 4 years from 2022/23 and schools are protected from receiving less than 90% of their previous year's allocations (prior to any top-ups). In addition, recognising the fluctuating demand as a result of the pandemic, there is an uplift of PEF per pupil from £1,200 up to £1,225.

CECYP funding will continue in the refreshed SAC programme with approximately £11.5m each year available to support local authorities' work to improve the educational and wellbeing outcomes of care experienced young people. This is in recognition that care experienced children and young people need additional support. The continuation of this funding will enable local authorities to target additional resources to support young people with their learning and their wellbeing, through mentoring programmes, outdoor learning, play activities and the implementation of a Virtual Headteacher role across a number of local authorities, all ensuring a strong continued focus on care experienced children and young people.

A number of actions are being taken to ensure that the SAC does not directly or indirectly, unlawfully discriminate.

For example:

• The refreshed 2022 PEF National Operational Guidance and the grant terms and conditions for the use of PEF, makes clear that resources should promote equity by taking into account protected characteristics when planning support and interventions. Although the PEF is allocated on the basis of free school meal registration, headteachers can use their professional judgement to bring additional children in to benefit from the targeted interventions and approaches.
• Additionally, the use of PEF should be planned for and monitored via existing planning and reporting processes. Schools must have plans in place at the outset to evaluate the impact of the funding. Clear outcomes must be planned for each key priority. These plans should outline clear outcomes to be achieved and how progress towards these, and the impact on closing the poverty-related attainment gap, will be measured. The guidance around this process makes clear links to How Good is Our School (Edition 4), which contains an equality indicator.
• The National Improvement Plan sets out a basket of 11 key measures, supported by 15 sub-measures that will be used to monitor progress towards the goal of closing the poverty-related attainment gap. We will continue to use the data that is published each year in the National Improvement Framework Evidence Report to show the poverty-related attainment gap at different stages of school and across literacy, numeracy and health & wellbeing.
• Education Scotland are working on a new Equity Toolkit and a suite of supportive guidance and materials, which is to support local leaders through a range of key considerations for such engagement and provides examples of this type of engagement being done effectively in local settings that apply to all children and young people, including those in protected characteristics. This guidance includes amongst its six key stages (developed originally by Children in Scotland) "feedback, evaluation and next steps". These materials will be shared on the National Equity Improvement hub. The framework to support the implementation of the SAC by local authorities and schools will continue to be updated and developed.
• We know that Gypsy Travellers tend not to self-identify. Traveller Guidance has been produced by the Scottish Government and was published in December 2018. The guidance advocates that action is required at local authority/ school/ classroom/individual children and young people levels. This will undoubtedly include resources funded by the ASF. Inclusive approaches which support individual children and young people and support families to engage are the starting point.
• A Gypsy/Traveller Ministerial Working Group (GTMWG) has been established to improve the lives of Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland. This Group consider the guidance – as part of a wider discussion about improving education for Gypsy/Travellers at their ongoing meetings.
• We will continue to monitor the impact of the SAC on children and young people in school education with protected characteristics through national data sources where they exist (i.e. age, gender, disability and race). Where it is not possible to monitor the impact through national data, we will work with local government and other stakeholders to identify any local activity that we may be able to draw evidence from.