Scottish Attainment Challenge - 10th anniversary: First Minister's speech - 1 September 2025

Good afternoon colleagues, it is a pleasure to be with you today.

I have a long history of association with many of the issues around the Scottish Attainment Challenge and all things education.

It is a very welcome opportunity to reflect on what has been undertaken over the last 10 years, but also to look very much ahead to what has to be done to complete the journey.

As I was thinking about what to say today I was reminded of the parental experience of driving children around the country and being asked the question ‘are we there yet?’

The same thing applies to the aspirations and the objectives about the Scottish Attainment Challenge and the closing of the poverty related attainment gap.

I think at the outset I have to acknowledge that the achievement of that objective is obviously conditional on what we are dealing with in that wider context within Scotland.

When I think about what Scotland looked like in 2015, as we embarked on this journey, and I look at some of the challenges that have happened since then – the challenges of the public finances over the years, the challenges arising out of Brexit and population change and staffing changes, the implications of Covid, which I think we are all still wrestling with in every aspect of public policy – the landscape of what we are dealing with is ever more challenging.

We should bear that in mind in consideration of what has been achieved as part of this journey. But fundamentally, for me, I am confident, and I think that has been part of the strength of what has been achieved over the past 10 years,  that the need to tackle the poverty related attainment gap became very quickly an uncontested objective within Scottish education.

So often – certainly during my tenure as Education Secretary and Jenny’s Gilruth’s will be no different – trying to herd the education system into one place where everyone might meet was a challenge. But on the issue of closing the poverty related attainment gap, the education system gravitated very strongly to that position.

I’m grateful for the participation and the engagement of local authorities around the country, of teaching staff, of education leaders to recognise the necessity of taking forward the measures that will support us in that objective.

I think having common purpose to begin on the agenda is a fundamental strength in what we’re trying to achieve. We then go on to look at what has been accomplished as a consequence of the sustained and significant public expenditure that has been allocated to the Scottish Attainment Challenge and Pupil Equity Funding over that period. By the time of the elections next year, £1.75 billion of public expenditure will have been spent and focused on this area of policy.

We can see significant progress has been made in achieving the objectives of the Scottish Attainment Challenge, not the least of which in the fact that the literacy poverty related attainment gap for pupils in primary schools has now narrowed to its lowest ever level.

We can see in the secondary sector some significant elements of progress as well. For S3 pupils, the poverty related attainment gap is at its narrowest ever level in both literary and numeracy. The SQA results in early August, just last month, indicated a further narrowing of the gap at National 5, Higher and Advanced levels. In terms of positive outcomes, more young people from deprived background are going on to positive outcomes as a consequence of their school education than was the case in the past.

In looking at the performance of our education system in addressing this policy imperative, and I’ll come on to talk about why this policy imperative remains central to the government's agenda, I think we can look back and see that significant progress has been made on the journey upon which we embarked 10 years ago, but it is by no means complete.

How I view the future development of the work to close the poverty related attainment gap is very much embedded in the mission of the government to eradicate child poverty. I think what has been a strength of the period in the last couple of years has been the reinforcement of the importance of connecting what we hope to achieve in the education system with what we hope to achieve in wider public policy interventions to improve the life chances of people in Scotland.

Because this is where the alternative comes from because we as a country cannot just accept that the poverty related attainment gap is part and parcel of what we have to accept as part of Scotland.

It's just not sustainable. It is not good for the children and young people who are affected. It is not good for us as a society where we might find people who, because they don't get off to the best start in life, they don't have the greatest opportunity in our education system.

We just cannot accept that the implications of that will be good for Scotland in the medium and long-term. So the necessity of ensuring the earliest possible intervention in a young person’s life, so we can help them to enable them to fulfil their potential, to be able to get as good an outcome as somebody who has been born into a more privileged background, all of these objectives are critical to the national wellbeing of Scotland.

You simply can’t have a situation where a proportion of our population are unable to fulfil their potential. So how I would like us to view the moment that we've reached in the work in closing the poverty related attainment gap is to consider how best that work can then be taken forward within the wider context of public policy in Scotland.  

When I became First Minister just over 15 months ago, I set out that the government’s determination was to eradicate child poverty.

What has been encouraging, what has happened in that period has been a much greater and sharper focus within government, within the public policy, on ensuring that all of our policy interventions are supporting that objective and of course closing the poverty related attainment gap will be a very important contributor to that agenda.

We have to make sure that every aspect of our public policy system is working in alignment with that objective – the ambition of eradicating child poverty in Scotland.

Reflecting on where we've reached to date, I would observe that good progress has been made, that we have measures that we can turn to which demonstrate that life chances are improving. Because of the achievement of young people within our education system,  young people are, to a greater extent, leaving the education system to go on to positive destination within our society.

All of that is an identification of the strength of the achievements that have been made, but we have to relentlessly focus on how that work aligns with the wider agenda of eradicating child poverty within Scotland. In that respect, I think we can see some of ways in which the wider policy interventions come together to make that possible.  

The expansion of early learning and childcare in Scotland, delayed by Covid until 2021, but now rolled out in every part of the country, is an excellent example of effective collaboration between the Scottish Government and local authorities around the country.

That availability of 1,140 hours in every community in the country is absolutely fundamental to helping us to achieve the outcomes for children and young people and the provision within that expansion of the eligibility for 1,140 hours for two year olds living in deprivation gives that opportunity for us to intervene at the earliest possible stage to try to support young people on their journey through the education system, and to avoid the continuation of the poverty trap that blights to many lives.

That work on the poverty related attainment gap within the wider policy agenda on early learning and childcare is an important intervention in helping the work underway.

Add to that some of the measures that I think have been the great strengths of the poverty related Attainment Challenge work, particularly around the distribution of Pupil Equity Funding. We’ve enabled a greater degree of resource to be available to schools to try to focus and use resources to address the needs particular communities and particular schools in a way that some of our traditional funding models have not enabled us to do.

My experience of being out and about in the education system has been to discuss with schools the impact that having that greater degree of flexibility available at local level in individual schools to configure interventions to meet the needs of children has been a really powerful element of adding to the strength of influence and leadership that can be exercised within individual schools.

The realisation of that opportunity for greater empowerment for our school leaders has helped us on that journey. Early learning and child care is providing a strong foundation for the prospects of young people, and greater flexibility in our schools in the areas of deprivation to target resources to the needs of individual pupils has been an important part of that journey too.

We have moved into Government having more powers in areas of social security policy to be able to support households to be able to overcome some of the financial challenges that would undoubtedly have had an impact on the wellbeing and prospects of children and young people.

The Best Start Grant that is available, that is only available because of our social security powers, is helping to address some of the deep-rooted poverty that exists in households. The Scottish Child Payment is very directly focused on households that are facing financial challenge. It is another example of how we are using activity outside of school to support the work to improve outcomes for children in school.

When the Scottish Child Payment gets described by one commentator as creating the largest fall in child poverty anywhere in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall – it was Danny Dorling who said that –  that indicates to me some significant powerful additional elements in the battle to eradicate child poverty, of which the Scottish Attainment Challenge as one important element has been reinforced by the actions the Government has taken outwith the core educational work that is undertaken in our schools.

Add to that the expansion of free school meals and wider eligibility for free school meals for primary 6 and 7, and now the pilot work that is underway in secondary schools for S1 to S3 pupils in eight council areas, and we have the foundations for a whole range of other interventions that have been made to try and tackle the core problem and the core challenge that too many young people from deprived backgrounds are coming out of our schools not achieving what is being achieved by pupils from more affluent backgrounds

My core point to you about all of that is to say that the work that is being done educationally within our schools, which has been supported and reinforced by the funding that has been available over the last 10 years around the Scottish Attainment Challenge, is now also being bolstered and supported by a wider suite of policy interventions that are complementary to that journey and that agenda.

As a consequence, we can be confident that the work that is going on to close the poverty related attainment gap is not only attracting that investment for its own sake but is being reinforced by the investment that is coming from outwith the school system.

Where that leaves me is with a question and a challenge about how best we take that agenda forward in the year ahead. Going back to where I started about the changes and developments that have taken place in society since the start of the Attainment Challenge in 2015, the impacts principally of austerity and Covid, we are operating in a fundamentally more challenging environment today than we where back in 2015. We had the original problem back in 2015, but I would say that the context has made that challenge even greater.

Where my mind has gravitated to, and you will hear this a lot in what I am saying in policy terms, is that we have to recognise the complexity of the difficulties that families living in poverty will be experiencing and recognise that we have to act to try to resolve those difficulties and address the barriers that those difficulties pose to the fulfilment of those individuals.

That is where my mind is focused very firmly and I am leading Government in this respect to work closely with local authorities on this question, on the idea of meeting these challenges through the concept of whole family support.

I think one of the lessons that I learned from the work of the Attainment Challenge and what schools do is that we have to recognise that wider context of grouping services and support around individuals to make sure that those individuals are able to be supported to overcome the difficulties and the challenges that they face.

My plea as we look to what lies ahead with the work to close the poverty related attainment gap is to focus ever more on how we can use schools as trusted places of engagement and relationship – and I think that is my sense of Scottish education, I think our schools are viewed to be generally trusted places of engagement for children and families around our country – to build better outcomes for children and families within Scotland.

What services can we group around about schools or what can be undertaken to support individuals better by the connection and trusted relationships that arise?

I had a young constituent in to see me who was in some difficulty about her housing circumstances. She came to see me and as I went through the conversation with her, I became ever more concerned about the wellbeing and circumstances of this  young constituent of mine.

She had a young child in early learning and childcare and I began to tiptoe around to asking her about her financial situation and what support was available, and she said there is nothing to worry about there, the early years worker at the nursery has sorted her out with all that sort of stuff.

The story said to me, that young woman, who had a particular difficulty with her housing circumstances had come to her Member of Parliament and as I probed into my deeper worry, I found that the early years worker in the local nursery had actually made all the connections to make sure that young woman could be properly and fully supported.

To me, that’s an illustration of the point I am trying to make here. That there is a relationship there, that if we are looking at the whole needs of a child who is presenting from a family in poverty we have got to make sure that we group that support around about that child and their family to help them get a better outcome

If we leave it to individuals in those circumstances to make those connections, I think we will not achieve all that we could achieve.

I think with the range of different interventions that we have available - from the support that is available in the health service; from the support that is available during maternity care; from the work that comes from the Best Start Grant; from the expansion of early learning and childcare; the focus to recognise we have got an ongoing challenge to fund our school system - we can make sure we can concentrate on the young people that face the greatest challenge and then bolster that with the wraparound assistance of a whole range of support and different interventions, whether it is child payments or free school meals or the school clothing grants that are available through local authorities and all of these other measures.

We have got the opportunity, I believe, to make a more profound impact on the poverty related attainment gap and the challenges that throws up to all of us.

What I would say to you today as we reflect upon 10 years of the Scottish Attainment Challenge is this: I think we have achieved a great deal. I think there has been a good  spirit of collaboration and policy focus on these endeavours.

We now have the opportunity with the focus of Government policy around child poverty to see some of the solutions in a wider and more significant context. But schools will always be crucial, fundamental, anchor institutions to enabling that journey to be accomplished because that is where the trusted relationships exist to enable that to be the case.

Among all of this there will be a lot of debate about how resources should be allocated, whether there are enough resources, whether they can achieve all that we need to achieve with the resources we’ve got available, but I come back to the fundamental point about the strength that comes from aligning the resources that we have available to us.

If we have policy clarity about the need to eradicate child poverty in Scotland, let us group our resources around all of that. At this gathering today there are many local authorities represented and there will be a range of different stakeholders who have interest in this agenda. There are ministers sitting around the Cabinet table who are constantly hearing from me my intolerance of compartmentalisation, of the need for us to work across policy boundaries to secure good outcomes.

I totally abhor the way in which policy priorities are viewed in silos and we are working to breakdown those barriers so that we can focus on the transformational impact that is necessary in the lives of children and young people in Scotland.

That’s where the Attainment Challenge started. We have made good headway to where we have reached just now but we have got to do more, and that is what the Government is committed to achieving as part of its agenda on the eradication of child poverty.

I look forward to discussing those issues with you today.