Scottish Attainment Challenge - 2018-2022: equality impact assessment

Evaluation Report - Attainment Scotland Fund

The funding streams within the Attainment Challenge covered by the annual ASF evaluation include:

• The Challenge Authority and Schools Programmes which provides additional resource to nine local authorities, and a further 73 schools outwith those local authorities with the highest proportions of deprivation.
• Pupil Equity Funding (PEF) provides funding each year directly to schools for headteachers to use at their discretion on initiatives that they consider will help close the poverty-related attainment gap. Over 97% of schools in Scotland have been allocated funding.
• Care Experienced Children and Young People (CECYP) funding for targeted initiatives, activities, and resources, designed to improve the educational outcomes and health and wellbeing of this group.
• Additionally a number of national programmes have been supported for targeted work to raise attainment and improve equity.

The ASF evaluation aims to provide learning about the overall implementation of the Attainment Challenge and the extent to which the aims of the ASF have been met.

A suite of ASF evaluation reports have been published, the latest of which was the Attainment Scotland Fund evaluation: fourth interim report - year 5, published in March 2021. All of the findings from this and preceding evaluation reports were summarised in the Closing the poverty-related attainment gap: progress report 2016 to 2021, also published in March 2021, the findings from which included:

• There is a strong body of evidence that shows good progress is being made towards closing the poverty-related attainment gap and that the Attainment Challenge supported by the £750 million ASF, is having a positive impact.
• Almost nine out of ten schools who completed the ASF survey reported that they have seen an improvement in closing the poverty-related gap in attainment and/or health and wellbeing as a result of ASF supported approaches.
• A great majority of those headteachers who completed the ASF survey (96%) felt that they had a good awareness of the range of approaches that can help close the poverty-related attainment gap, while 93% felt confident about selecting the approach most effective for their school.
• Over the first five years of the Attainment Challenge programme there is evidence that almost all of the short and medium-term outcomes have been met and there has been demonstrable progress on a number of long-term measures to close the poverty related attainment gap.
• The attainment gap is closing, but it remains a long-term endeavour.
• For primary school pupils, the attainment gaps in literacy and numeracy narrowed between 2016/17 and 2018/19 {although to note that they widened in 2020/21 likely due, at least in part, to the impact of COVID-19 on learning- see 2020/21 figures in section below}. (based on the combined P1,P4&P7 attainment)
• For S3 pupils, the attainment gap in numeracy narrowed between 2016/17 and 2018/19. {Data for S3 pupils was not collected in 2019/20 or 2020/21}
• The gap in the proportion of young people in education, employment and training has narrowed year-on-year between 2017 (11.5pp) and 2020 (9.9pp). The gap has since narrowed further to 9.3pp in 2021.
• The most recent evidence from the International Council of Education Advisers (ICEA) acknowledged the progress that is being made in Scottish education to close the attainment gap through the Attainment Challenge and wider education policies.
• Whilst the attainment data indicates a variation in the pace of progress, the change in culture and ethos that is being seen, particularly in Challenge Authorities, with a stronger focus on poverty and equity, will maximise the sustainability of those improvements already achieved, providing solid foundations on which we can accelerate progress.