Scottish Attainment Challenge 2022 to 2023 - 2025 to 2026: equality impact assessment

Conclusion

There is a strong body of evidence that shows good progress has been made towards closing the poverty-related attainment gap and that the SAC supported by the £750 million ASF over the course of the last parliamentary term, and by £1 billion ASF over the course of this parliamentary term, is having a positive impact on reducing inequalities of outcome. The Scottish Government published a progress report, Closing the poverty-related attainment gap: a report on progress 2016-2021 which shows almost nine out of ten schools 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 headteachers (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.

The SAC will mitigate the impact of socio-economic disadvantage on the health and wellbeing, attainment and educational outcomes of children and young people impacted by poverty. This will be achieved by providing training and resources for schools and teachers suitable to addressing the needs of children in equalities groups and helping to address the poverty-related attainment gap. The enhanced professional development and leadership opportunities, better use of data to drive improvements and the increased level of collaboration within and across schools and local authorities, and with external partners impacts beyond the immediate target group of children affected by poverty and improves educational outcomes for all children and young people.

The SAC also promotes good community relationships. It encourages professionals working with children and young people to maintain a clear lines of communication with the families of children and young people who will benefit from the resources or activities under the SAC, and the children and young people themselves. There is also evidence from recent SAC activity to demonstrate that reasonable adjustments are being made to support children and young people with protected characteristics. For example, investment in speech and language development, additional support for speakers of English as an Additional Language, recruitment of educational psychologists, counsellors and investment in nurture bases.

Following the launch of the refresh of the SAC Scottish Government and Education Scotland will continue to support local authorities to understand any barriers to uptake and opportunities to reduce inequalities of outcome caused by socio-economic disadvantage (as well as wider inequalities linked to protected characteristics) through sharing best practice. SRAs will work closely with the strategic lead for each of the Regional Improvement Collaboratives to support the improvement priorities outlined within local authorities’ plans and share best practice. SRAs also work in partnership with local authority Directors of Education in their region as well as other central staff, providing professional advice and support and leading improvement.

Education Scotland will further evaluate the impact of their support through their own corporate plan and its measures adding evidence into the annual ASF evaluation led by Scottish Government.

HM Inspectors of Education will gather evidence of what is working well in the system and areas where further development is needed, including a focus on approaches to tackling the poverty-related attainment gap in the annual cycle of school inspections.

The EQIA process for the SAC did not identify indirect or direct discrimination through the policy intention and identified a number of actions being taken to ensure that the SAC does not directly or indirectly, unlawfully discriminate.

This EQIA analysis will be kept under regular review, with any new data or evidence analysed as it becomes available to monitor the on-going impact of the SAC on protected characteristics.

We welcome your views and evidence. If you are in regular contact with policy makers in the Scottish Government, please feel free to use your normal routes of engagement to provide further evidence or comments. If you are not in regular contact with policy makers in the Scottish Government or have any more general comments on both the assessment and mitigation activities please send them to ScottishAttainmentChallenge@gov.scot.