# data[].attributes.body
Scottish Government Equity Audit
- a rapid review that resonated as a checklist of what school's achieved during the pandemic
- how effective were the approaches/strategies?

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Children's social circumstances and educational outcomes - NHS
- Agreed with points made but questioned validity of arguments due to research methods.

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Edinburgh Poverty Commission (2020)
- overview of poverty in Edinburgh - housing
- little information about education
- supports given to society
- would staff reference this to access further supports for children and families?
- Related to social justice readings M Treanor- do we know the impact of Covid-19 on our families? How can we find out?

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From Deficiency to Strength - Shifting the mindset about Education Inequality (Yong Zhao, 2016)

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Poverty Related Attainment Gap - Poverty Alliance
- Limited evidence around the impact of interventions.
- Parental engagement highlighted as key in Early Years.
- More tracking/mapping required after Early Years.

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Children's social circumstances and educational outcomes - NHS
Key theme:
Children experiencing poverty can and do go on to experience positive educational outcomes  but that there are poverty related factors that can impact on this.

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The poverty Alliance based in Glasgow - researching the extent of the attainment poverty gap from Early years through to post 16 and into the marketplace. Apart from in the early years, where the attainment gap begins and widens from there over time, the research evidence is largely limited.

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Children's Social Circumstances and Educational Outcomes (2018), review by NHS mentions research by a number of studies linked to the social, physical and familial influences on educational outcomes, such as Growing up in Scotland, PISA, MCS, ALSPAC and EPPSE. Great summary of what already read in Treanor readings, however research and data from sources not all Scottish based, some global and not effectively sourced. Not 'deep' or contextualised in terms of educational outcomes; they are seen from a health perspective. Review does not mention structural, political influences.

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What support works? Inquiry into attainment and achievement of school children experiencing poverty,
SP Paper 365
4th Report, 2018 (Session 5)

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Two attainment gaps in Scottish Education
- SQA Attainment Gap & the Gap between what the Government says and what's happening on the ground.
- Opinion piece from one author.

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Achieving Equity Post COVID-19
- Key theme 'Building Back Better' for more equitable education and development of practices.

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Closing the Attainment Gap in Scottish Education - Joseph Rowntree Foundation
- Gave background on what the Attainment Gap is.
- Better evaluation required of what we are doing.

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Closing the attainment gap. What can schools do? Written in 2016. Deficit thinking about teachers and schools. Suggests principles and strategies that should be universally applied to reduce attainment gap. Ignores context. Conflates adversity and poverty and is heavily influenced by both PISA and OECD.

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Closing the Attainment Gap - Joan Mowat
- Global/International policy can't just be lifted and applied at local level.
- Challenged National Policies.
- Robust argument backed up by evidence.

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“Children’s Social Circumstances and Educational Outcomes”

NHS 2018

Recommendations for wider ways to address poverty. Not just schools. Recommendations for cost of school day.

Cii “Achieving Equity Post COVID-19?”

University of Glasgow 2020

Calls for a national evidence base about what works.
We think this is research.

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What Support Works? Policy research paper.

Scottish perspective with a poor evidence base and poor referencing to back up reasoning and decisions/recommendations. Told us what we already know but felt like it had a political flavour to it, in order for politicians to feel like they had been involved.

* Impact of Poverty
* Accuracy of measures for deprivation
* cost of the school day

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Very much a report on the evidence (or lack thereof) of the gathered information

Split up into Sectors Early-Primary-Secondary

Focused who is most affected

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Children's Social Circumstances - Dr Jane White. Ann Archer Reading A. Group 2.
-  NHS research around improving children's outcomes at school through  improving a combination of positive factors including health, housing and social and emotional development
- A call for more money to fund partnership working and support services and a gathering together of mainly English based research
- Nothing new and very English based research. Questionable methodology and appendixes

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“The Poverty-Related Attainment Gap – A Review of the Evidence”

Poverty Alliance 2021

Key themes:

- Not enough data nationally to evaluate performance
-Strong pockets of good practice but not consistent and evaluated at local, regional and national level

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Closing the Attainment Gap - What can schools do?
- 6 key ideas about what schools can do.
- A lot of these things are already being done.
- Felt quite out of date.

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Closing the Attainment Gap (Mowat, 2017)
- This was a critique of Scottish Government policy around addressing the attainment gap, focusing on the Scottish Attainment Challenge and the NIF. Made by a member of the School of Education at Strathclyde University.
- The over-arching message was that schools continue to have the majority of pressure put on them but in order for this to work, all areas of society need to be involved e.g. economic, social, relational etc.
Are we targeting the root of the problem?
- It acknowledged that borrowing or sharing policies often don't work as they don't link with the specific context of countries/schools.
- Schools can't do this alone and the Scottish Government need to address this.
- Our plan for the future needs to be long term which can span over any political party.
- Empowerment and investing in staff to build capacity at all levels is seen as critical.

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JRF - Closing the Attainment Gap in Scottish Education.
- Schools can not close the poverty related attainment gap alone.
- Summary of what different bodies in Scotland can do.
- Policy making needs to refocus.

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What supports works? Inquiry into attainment and achievement of school children experiencing poverty.

This document is a series of recommendations aimed at the government and education Scotland based on evidence gathered and discussed by the committee.
We felt this was not a document aimed at head teachers but at local authorise, education Scotland and the government in power. The document may lead to policies being developed?

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Titled "Closing the attainment gap- what can schools do"? Written by an education specialist/ former HT who recently completed doctoral studies written on behalf of Scottish Parliament (2016).
5 guiding principles on what schools can do to close the gap and 6 key areas/interventions from evidence based educational research (national and international).
BUT- has big focus on OECD and PISA and we debated whether these comparisons are completely relevant to our Scottish schools.
Talks about role of education but talks also about the multi-dimensional effects across services/organisations.
'Attainment' was not the focus- rather 'achievement', but it was felt our current educational structure does not reflect this. We are pressured by attainment.
'Strong school leadership' section talks about "capturing missing talent from disadvantaged pupils" which does not align with our readings on 'poverty aspiration'.
Summary- easy read but very simplistic in terms of closing the gap and quite an ideological perspective. We were hoping for more detailed discussion which we feel other readings we have been guided towards do actually provide.

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US Journal of Social Issues - Zhao (2016) Major social/educational reform required to move paradigm from deficit recognition and measurement to cultivating a model based on individuals strengths. Cited inequalities similar to those faced in Scotland. References throughout the article to support the position. Gave recommendations. Quite idealist and unrealistic in that schools are urged to be the agents of change. We question how that may be possible in reality.

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Group 8: Edinburgh Poverty Commission (2020) Poverty and Coronovirus in Edinburgh

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Group 8: Edinburgh Poverty Commission (2020) Poverty and Coronovirus in Edinburgh

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Key themes emerging are the impact of Covid-19 on those experiencing poverty. The significant additional pressures brought about by Covid-19 are recognised in areas such as wellbeing. The importance of connection, and the distribution of supports and services to those who need it are also highlighted.

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The poverty-related attainment gap: a review of evidence - The Poverty Alliance (2021)
- many limitations mentioned to the amount of evidence of impact, especially in Primary and Secondary
- discussed the need for a review of PEF spending, impact, sharing of practice
- need to pull together services across sectors as more impact in early years - can practice hear be shared and adapted

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Poverty Related Attainment Gap - Review of Evidence
Key themes:
- good evidence of intervention impact within Early Years
-lacking evidence of impact at school level, post-16 work/training
-limited collated national evidence, complex national picture

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From Deficiency to Strength - Shifting the mindset about Education Inequality (Yong Zhao, 2016)

Key theme was to consider a shift in educational paradigm. Based on Ameraican system but themes resonate with Scottish system. Establishes current paradigm as focusing on a deficit based model and how we plug the identified gaps. It promotes a paradigm shift to one that builds on learners indiviualities and strengths. Stop fixing deficits and start looking for strengths!

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“Closing the Attainment Gap”

Mowat 2017

We think that this document thinks it is a piece of practice literature!

It is a firm critique of policy but not a policy document itself.

“What Support Works?”

Scottish Government 2018

Very politically driven discussion about what makes a difference. We have given you the money and we are aghast that this is not working!!

Hii “Impact of School Building Closures”

Executive Summary

Scottish Government 2021

List of everything that has been done to try and close the attainment gap.
Heavily political document.
Reads a bit like a pat on the back.
No real evidence of impact - this is a theme through the readings.

Hi “Poverty and Coronavirus in Edinburgh”

Edinburgh Poverty Commission 2020

Highlights problems but very little focus on education.

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Two Attainment Gaps in Scottish Education - Walter Hume Blog post
Personal blog post reviewing the impact of relationships on a number of levels looking at the role of the SQA.

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Poverty and Coronavirus in Edinburgh - Interim Report (May 2020)
Key themes:
Members of Edinburgh Poverty Commission, 1 from education and 11 were white, middle class - diversity?
It's a snapshot in time (May 2020)
There was little on education - home learning and digital strategy.
Housing and Working Poor in Edinburgh section was interesting.

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Education Endowment Foundation (2020) Parental Engagement

Education Endowment Foundation (No date) Early Years - Supporting Children’s early learning and development

Education Scotland (2015) Developing the Young Workforce Career Education (3-18)

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Closing the attainment gap - Mowat

Key policies links are the scottish Attainment challenge and the National improvement framework.

The article highlights the need for a more holistic approach to reducing the poverty related attainment gap.

Some key recommendations are that policy should not just be lifted across the global and national context, culture and context needs to be applied.

Across party strategies should be considered and not just specific govt. each term.

One key recommendation should be not to through money at it and look at concepts we discussed earlier where there should be leadership at all levels and grow capacity in the system - invest in people.

The limitations of the article are that further research is required to include the holistic aspects discussed and how "policy would unfold into practice"

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J Rowntree' pivotal piece of research in 2014, clearly and powerfully identifying the relationship between socio-economic background , attainment and positive destinations, which went on to influence government policy - such as PEF. What is interesting is research does provide solutions, but also highlights the key role not just of schools, but local authorities, Education Scotland, HMie, universities and teacher training insitutions.

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Edinburgh Poverty Commission - Poverty and coronavirus in Edinburgh
- Testimony based evidence of poverty in Edinburgh
- Various recommendations for Jobs/Income, Housing/homelessness, Food and the cost of living and social isolation and co-ordinating a response. Calls for system-wide approaches
- Lacks the 'How'. Very much vision-based
- Snapshot in time
- Very little on education, teaching and learning.

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Closing the Attainment Gap: What can schools do? 2016.
Advocates 5 guiding principles and 6 interventions/strategies. What to do, rather than how. Positions responsibility at school level. Deficit positioning, particularly of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. Key themes of: child at centre; balancing autonomy and accountability; professional learning; climate of trust and respect.

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This document was written by someone collating evidence around Closing the Attainment Gap for their Doctorate. It was a bit dated we felt and didn't give any recommendations or conclusions. It retold the story of how schools have tackled Closing the Attainment Gap and made reference to Pisa and the OECD reports which were far removed from the Scottish Context at that time. This document was contradictory in parts and also misconstrued Poverty with adversity.

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Group 2 - Text C                     Achieving Equity Post COVID-19              

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Group 2 - Text C                     Achieving Equity Post COVID-19              

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Feeling from our group that this was already outdated.
Thoughts around a revised education system.
Five key themes identified by The Equity Audit.

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'What support works?'
- Although informed by aspects of research, it is heavily politicised and instructional in language.

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Children's social circumstances and educational outcomes. NHS Health Scotland 2018

Document didn't really raise anything that we were unfamiliar with. We agreed with the points that were made but struggled to see the clear link to education in Scotland , most links were to education in England, therefore we questioned the purpose of the document.

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Closing the Attainment Gap in Scottish Education - Joseph Rowntree Foundation
- Heavy weighting on strong research and evidence
-  recommendations at all levels (school, LA, Government)
- critical of lack of current lack of data (from 2014 when written) re what is being done and impact
- Scottish Governments response include SAC, PEF

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Group 8: Covid-19 impact of school building closures. Scottish Government (2021)

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Group 8: Covid-19 impact of school building closures. Scottish Government (2021)

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Key messages were around what the impacts of Covid-19 were on young people and families and what was done to tackle this by the Scottish Government. There was a significant 'Reducing Equity' section which went into some detail. The next steps, at least in the executive summary, were in less detail and fairly general: a system wide focus on 'closing the gap' and 'the longer term impacts (of Covid-19) recognised'.

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“The Poverty-Related Attainment Gap – A Review of the Evidence”

Poverty Alliance 2021

Research document.
Lack of evidence.

Ci “Closing the Attainment Gap in Scottish Education”

Summary paper

Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2014

Highlighted that schools alone can not fix poverty. This is a pervasive theme in a number of the documents.
Highlighted that the family background matters more than what school they go to.
Carried a lot of weight. Well researched.

“Closing the Attainment Gap – What Can Schools Do?

SPICe 2016

Looks at national and international research. Discusses impact of socio-economic status.
Again speaks about schools not being able to do this alone.

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Group 5 Mowatt PRAG  Realistic or Pipedream (D)

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Group 5 Mowatt PRAG  Realistic or Pipedream (D)

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-How policy is 'received' and 'translated' using Steiner-Khamsi lens
-The shortfalls of policy borrowing
-How Scottish Gov policy addresses PRAG and how this links to national and international policy
-Need for more empirical research to demonstrate how policy is translated on the ground

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Cii “Two Attainment Gaps in Scottish Education” Walter Humes Blog 2020

This is all about opinion.
What is the difference between opinion and theory?
Identifies the gaps.
Discusses top-down approach.
Not engaging teachers.
But has encouraged them to question policy.

“From Deficiency to Strength: Shifting the Mindset about Education Inequality”

Yong Zhao 2016

Critique of the concept of the achievement gap.
Hits out at idea of a deficit based meritocracy.
Proposes a strength-based educational paradigm.

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Closing the attainment gap (JRF)
* Ongoing issues with poverty related attainment gap.
* Reality that there is a need for more data and a data driven model
*Highlights that the teaching profession in isolation cannot close the gap
*Also flags the key influence of parental socio economic backgrounds
*Anchors on the key roles of focused policy making, evaluation and use of data. Underpinned by a strong shared focus and a deeper understanding of the ways in which poverty affects attainment from all involved in trying to close this gap

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Closing the attainment gap – a realistic proposition or an elusive pipe dream?

Joan Mowat  - School of Education, University of Strathclyde 2017

Critique of the Scottish Government and the policies put in place to address the attainment gap.

Policy can’t be lifted from successful countries or regions into another setting as this doesn’t take account of culture or context.

PISA and OECD evidence used doesn’t take account of culture of context.

Holistic, multi-agency approach targeted at the problem, rather than education and the government throwing money at a problem or quick fixes.

Leadership at all levels and investing in capacity building in staff.

NIF and Scottish Attainment Challenge

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"Closing the Attainment Gap - What Can Schools Do?" SPICe 2016

- Doctorate Paper, former HT & education specialist (???) one author,  written to Scottish Parliament through lens of Government Agency

- No depth, dated, nothing new.

- Summary at start of the paper, no conclusion

- Lots of quotes backed up with PISA or OECD quotes

- contradicting messages at times

- What to do not how to do it, nothing useful for people on the ground and as written in 2016, dated

- accountability with teachers - measured against PISA, OECD standard

- large bibliography

Again, we discussed bias of paper written through GOVT lens, no real depth and no data informing where we are now.

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Two attainment gaps - W. Hume
Overlaps with practice literature, as a critique of government policy in several ways - that its policies to close the poverty related gap have done little to remedy the deep structural inequalities in wider society and also education has become far too political which means it has been very difficult to draw honest evidence based conclusions regarding the lack of progress with this priority. He claims there is a lack of objectivity with regards many of the national institutions supporting the delivery of education - and a lack of honesty regarding actual achievements and progress.

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“Children’s Social Circumstances and Educational Outcomes”

NHS 2018

Key Themes:

- Impacts of social and physical environments
- Impacts of parental income
- Aspirations are shaped by a broad range of influences
- Importance of relationships and supportive parenting
- Impacts of Family Structure
- Impacts of school environment

Some of the limitations:

-data used was English based - only some Scottish data used - meant to be Scottish perspective. Not enough data to back up claims
-very general statements
-Health perspective - more discussion needed with education colleagues

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) : Impact of school building closures - Equity Audit
(November 2020)
Key themes:
- Priority on equity.
- National picture - 54 schools were involved nationally from a range of demographics.
- HWB support
- Digital infrasrtucture
- Teaching provision and support for teachers
- Support for families
We felt this was a political paper listing what the Scottish Government had done up to Nov 2020.
The outcome was that a group of young people from 9-18 would continue to meet with the Deputy First Minister. It would be useful to know what their aim/vision is.

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What support works?
A political document looking at ways poverty impacts on children in schools education and ways schools can mitigate impact.
Identifies key themes of:
increase in poverty
Hunger
Importance of leadership in schools
Evidence of improvement with HMIe being used to focus on this
PEF funding - different approaches and inconsistencies
Local Authorities having very different approaches to FSM
This was created in 2018- same issues still here. Lack of evidence and impact of report.
Barriers to participation

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What Support Works? Inquiry into attainment and achievement of school children experiencing poverty. Scottish Government 2018

A highly politicised paper with a bias towards SNP and it real political agenda. The overarching reason for forming this committee appeared to be for proving that the money is being used properly in schools.

It lacked robust evidence and gave the vibe that PEF is fixing all but in reality it isn't and there are real inequalities in how PEF is distributed.

It's 3 years old now and we questioned what has actually changed based on the recommendations in this report? Deep rooted poverty still exists and a lot of the findings could be linked to Professor Treanor's writing.

The report highlighted inequalities in funding across LAs.

The report recognised strengths and weaknesses using the Sim-D and FME to define deprivation and recommended development of more sophisticated indicators.

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Group 2 - Text C                                          Two Attainment gaps in Scottish Education

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Group 2 - Text C                                          Two Attainment gaps in Scottish Education

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Tbh I'm not sure if this is Theory Literature??

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Impact of School Building Closures:

Executive Summary. Scottish Government 2021
A synthesis of key local, national and international literature, supplemented with local evidence gathered from 54 schools across Scotland.
Findings include key themes from literature and evidence:
- Health and wellbeing support
- Digital infrastructure and connectivity
- Support to parents and families
- Teaching provision and the quality of learning
-  Support for teachers and the wider workforce

Need to intensify support and reduce inequity

List of wonderful things the Scottish govt have done. No note on their effectiveness or uptake. Published a few months before the election. Highly political document.
Next steps are quite generic.

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2 Attainment Gaps on Scottish Education
- critical of current practice of top down approach to SQA
- opinion / blog
- no recommendations

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Closing the attainment Gap - Mowat. Reading D

Policy borrowing - potential solution attractive but potential barriers need to be understood.

Challenging |National assumptions which underlie reform.

Difficulties translating policy into practice.

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Achieving Equity Post Covid-19

- takes account of key themes from OECD reports and Scottish Government's Equity Audit 2021
- purpose to stimulate thinking for policy makers and practitioners
- encouraging policy change to use challenges from Covid-19 to 'build back better'

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From Deficiency to Strength - Shifting the mindset about Education Inequality (Yong Zhao, 2016)

Based on American Education system but...

-Written just before NIF was published

-Almost a warning to Scotland about the dangers of what has become our NIF

-Worth a read as makes you think about whether the NIF focus on raising attainment in Literacy and Numeracy is forcing us into a deficit model of support and whether we should be widening pupil experiences and opportunities with the majority of our PEF.

-Argues we should be building 'strengths profiles' rather than gathering data on standardised scores.

Definitely worth a read!

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From Deficiency to Strength - Shifting the Mindset about Education Inequality (Yong Zhao, 2016)

* An American based journal of social issues

- A very thought provoking piece of literature which discusses the implications of taking a deficit-driven paradigm rather than focusing on strengths.
- Comparisons can be made to the Scottish system and our approaches to closing the attainment gap.
- Explores the need to reconsider and re-evaluate the term 'merit' within education.
- Reminds us that 'differences are not deficits'.