Save the Children Scotland have produced a thoughtful and penetrating policy briefing 'Better Odds At School'. In this report they point out that children from Scotland's poorest families make less progress than their classmates from better off households.
The achievement gap in Dundee that the 'Better Odds At School' briefing reveals is a matter of great concern to me. I am a supporter of equality of educational opportunity and if this report is right, the difference between the SQA exam results in secondary schools in our city of pupils in receipt of free school meals compared with those pupils not in receipt of free school meals is very worrying and worthy of further investigation.
I call on Education Convener, Councillor Liz Fordyce to:
- ask the Education Department's statistician to check the analysis used by the report's authors and report back to the Education Committee;
- prepare a report for the Education Committee based on applying the Save the Children Scotland's analysis to the 2010 SQA examination results;
- invite Save the Children Scotland to give members of the Education Committee a briefing about their report and the analysis on which it is based and finally
- commit to applying a rigorous equality impact assessment on each of the cuts in Education she is planning for next year so that these will not impact unfairly on children from households with the lowest incomes."
