Lies, damn lies and education stats

A week after the OECD published its latest (2022) findings in the Programme for International Student Assessment, a triennial exercise known by its acronym PISA, the SNP-led Scottish Government and the party itself are spinning a report purportedly showing the opposite of what the Paris-based think tank has discovered.

As Profs Lindsay Paterson and Walter Humes, two of Scotland’s leading educationalists, reported on these pages, PISA 2022 reveals a decline in attainment and a rise in inequality – a sad commentary on two decades of the Scottish Executive/Government and 16 years of the SNP in power. Yet the party is now claiming that the Scottish Government’s report for 2022-23 on Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence levels (ACEL) shows “LITERARY AND NUMERACY ATTAINMENT GAP AT RECORD LOW” (its caps).

Here’s a flavour of the spin: “The SNP Government is delivering major progress on attainment, as new figures reveal the number of pupils in Primary schools from both the most and least deprived areas achieving expected levels of literacy and numeracy has reached a record high. The Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Level (ACEL) statistics show that in numeracy, 79.6% of pupils reached the levels expected in 2022/23 a rise of 0.5 percentage points compared to the previous high in 2018/19. Literacy levels also saw a rise of 0.4% from the previous high in 2018/19 to 72.2%.”

Its news release concludes: “The SNP has said that this shows that the Scottish Government’s investment is improving outcomes in education and delivering real progress.”

The Scottish Government acknowledges that the ACEL “assessments of children’s progress are based on teachers’ professional judgements in schools” or, as Humes says, self-reporting by teachers – some of whom (at least) “feel under pressure to report positively.”

Prof Paterson is caustic: “Sadly, this annual exercise is next-to-useless, because the statistics which it contains are based on ‘teacher judgement’ with no indication of how that relates to any kind of objective measure. The results are thus akin to the education system’s marking its own homework.

“Of course, this is not to impugn the judgement of teachers in their role of helping pupils to learn. We all, as teachers in whatever sector, have to be optimistic about our students. That itself is enough to bring into question any intuitive assessment we make of their achievements. Add to that the inevitable biases that we all, as teachers, harbour, and we ought to be suspicious of any summary of assessment that is not based on the kind of objective evidence that only surveys such as PISA provide.

“For the Scottish government to claim that this supersedes PISA – as they do in their statement today – is either disingenuous or evidence of dismaying statistical ignorance.”

The ACEL report is based on data covering “all pupils in Primary 1, Primary 4, Primary 7 and Secondary 3 in mainstream schools and all pupils based in special schools/units. Data were provided for 234,291 pupils.” Census date was June 12 this year. Independent schools are excluded; the reporting schools are all funded by one of the 32 Scottish councils, with one voluntary-aided school and seven special schools.

• These ACEL data are not accredited official statistics as defined by the Office for Statistics Regulation and as acknowledged by the Scottish Government which refers (in the introduction) to four actions it must undertake before they can achieve that status. “The Scottish Government will aim to take these actions in time for the release of 2023/24 data in December 2024,” it says.

Well, we’ll wait and see if it holds to the deadline. Meanwhile, we prefer to go with the OECD/PISA findings and the two commentaries we’ve published by Profs Paterson and Humes.

Lost Opportunities to last a lifetime by Lindsay Paterson HERE

Lost opportunities in Scottish education: lack of leadership by Walter Humes HERE

Comments

Sue Palmer says
December 12, 2023 at 6:00 pm
I’ve just replied to the govt announcement, suggesting that – given the relentless pressure on schools to improve literacy/numeracy stats, increases of 0.045% are not surprising. But what about the spiralling mental health problems and additional support needs. And the pressure of cost-of-living crisis for the living in poverty.
I suggested they read Upstart’s suggestions for educational improvement:
httpss://upstart.scot/education-how-does-scotland-get-out-of-this-fine-mess/

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