This article appears as part of the Lessons to Learn newsletter.
There’s only one big story in Scottish education this week – the publication of the 2024 exam results.
Unfortunately the day got off to yet another shambolic start as it emerged that thousands of results emails were showing a blank space where the grades should have been.
Then, when the results actually arrived, they looked disastrous. As we reported on Tuesday morning, pass rates have fallen and attainment gaps have increased compared to previous years. Writing for The Herald, researcher and analyst Barry Black argued that ‘alarm bells should be ringing’.
But some people say things aren’t so bad, and that results have simply returned to the levels that we saw pre-pandemic. We have, they argue, just returned to normal – so what’s the problem?
Is that really true?
Well, yes – but only if you take the narrowest possible view of the available data and ignore all the evidence that you find inconvenient.
If you look exclusively at Higher level, then both the pass rate and the attainment gap look the same now as they did just before Covid hit.
In 2019 the Higher pass rate was 74.8% and the attainment gap was 16.9........