Councils have urged parents to be “cautious” about the latest figures that paint a worrying picture of education in the north of Scotland.
The Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels statistics were published for the first time yesterday.
The figures represent teachers’ views of their pupils’ performance – and councils raised concerns that standards may vary.
Councillor Angela Taylor, convener of Aberdeen City Council’s Education and Children’s Services Committee, which performed particularly poorly in the assessment, said “long term data sets” would show improvement.
She said: “The report is based upon experimental statistics, using data under development, and we have to be cautious about how this is interpreted on a national level.
“Each local authority has developed its own approach to this assessment which makes direct comparisons impossible.
“The Aberdeen City Council figures are based on an assessment by our teachers, utilising CfE levels as a sole assessment tool for the first time.
“We believe it is an honest representation of that professional judgement but we are confident other more established long term data sets we have provide a more rounded picture of education in Aberdeen.”
However, Ms Taylor agreed with opposition MSPs that a failure to tackle teacher recruitment in the north-east was contributing to the difficult results.
She said: “As the lowest funded council in Scotland we have repeated almost on a weekly basis to the Scottish Government that underfunding in our education system harms our
children’s education.
“(Education Secretary) Mr Swinney and the Scottish Government have been silent when it comes to helping the city of Aberdeen for some time now despite our request for help around teacher numbers.”
She said she hoped the funding situation would change in tomorrow’s budget, but added: “I won’t hold my breath”.
Highland Council’s head of education Jim Steven said he believed “teacher judgement” had been “effective”.
He added: “I believe that today’s publication of this information will support all authorities and Scotland’s schools to have greater confidence in the validity and reliability of the professional judgement of teachers.”
Maria Walker, director of education at Aberdeenshire Council, added: “This work continues and the national data is part of on-going improvement.
“It is important to stress that such data is only part of the picture in reporting progress to pupils and their parents and that schools use a variety of ways to ensure that young people know how they individually are progressing.”
Laurence Findlay, director of education and social care at Moray Council, said the survey represented “experimental data with no rigorous local or national moderation or standardisation”.
But he added: “Notwithstanding the significant staffing shortages in Moray schools at present and the condition of our school estate, our teachers remain committed to raising attainment and improving outcomes for young people.”
