South Ayrshire primary pupils failing to meet expectations during pandemic

The impact of the pandemic on South Ayrshire primary school pupils has been revealed in a new report.

Each year schools in the region are asked to give a prediction on the level they expect pupils to achieve in 'reading, writing, list & talking and numeracy'.

And having held relatively steady for several years, the latest figures show a major slump in South Ayrshire, between five and 10 percent on the last available statistics.

The statistics compare the levels pupils in primaries 1, 4 and 7 to the levels that schools expected them to achieve or, indeed, improve on.

With no data collected last year, the 2020/21 figures a compared with 2018/19, the last full school year before the Covid crisis hit.

However, there is no comparative evaluation of pupils in S3, the other group which has been assessed in recent years.

Like primary schools, no secondary school data was collected last year, but this has been once again been the case for S3.

In 2018/19, 85 per cent of P1, P4 and P7 pupils achieved or bettered expectations in reading.

By 2020/21 this had dropped to 75 per cent.

Similarly, 81 per cent of primary pupils had met or exceed expectations in writing in 2018/19, dropping to 70.5 per cent in 2020/21.

There was a smaller drop, from 88 per cent to 82.7 per cent in 'List & Talk' over the same period.

In numeracy, the fall was just under eight per cent, from 84 per cent in 2018/19 to 76.4 per cent in 2020/21.

Despite this, the council says that the difficulties around the return of pupils to schools had meant that it was difficult to make an assessment of expected results and expressed confidence that the results would improve again.

In a report due to be made to South Ayrshire Council's Leadership Panel tomorrow , Douglas Hutchison depute chief executive and director of educational services, states: "Despite the ongoing pandemic and the resulting periods of school closures/home learning the Scottish Government requested that this data was gathered for session 2020-21.

"Due to the pressures on secondary schools due to the Alternative Certification Model for young people in the senior phase it was agreed that S3 data would not be collected.

"Overall, the percentage of children reaching their expected level is down between 5.3- 10.5 per cent in comparison to 2018-19 data.

"When school buildings re-opened in term four, teachers focussed on literacy, numeracy and the health and wellbeing of children.

"As a result, and due to the timescales required for the collection of assessment data, opportunities to assess the progress that children had made were limited.

"We are confident that children will progress well and reach their potential in session 2021-22."

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