Scottish gov't highlights role of education to achieve fairer society

The Scottish government on Tuesday said education is at the heart of its program to achieve a fairer and more prosperous society through helping Scotland's young people.

Unveiling the Scottish government's plans for the final year of this parliamentary term, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced a new National Improvement Framework that will help close the gap in attainment and ensure all children are being equipped with the skills they need.

The framework will help track the progress of all children, introducing a system of standardized assessment in the first year of primary school (P1), P4, P7 and in the third year of secondary school (S3) that will bring consistency to the assessment of literacy and numeracy and tracking of progress across Scotland.

"Improving school attainment is arguably the single most important objective in this Program for Government," said Sturgeon.

"Improving it overall and closing the gap between children in our most and least deprived areas is fundamental to our aim of making Scotland fairer and more prosperous. To address it, we need to be open to innovation and new practice, that's the purpose of our 100 million pounds (about 153 million U.S. dollars) Attainment Fund," she noted.

"But we also need to have better information about attainment so that we measure progress consistently and drive change. We need to be able to see what's working and where we still need to improve," she added.

Sturgeon stressed that the new assessments will focus on literacy and numeracy and be piloted next year in schools participating in the Attainment Challenge and then introduced in all schools in 2017. Endit