If we care about attainment gaps, throw everything at early years

Above all, they apply to education. A child’s life course is dictated largely by what happens in the early years. It starts in the womb. It is conditioned by the home. Reading differences start to emerge by the age of two, so the experts tell us. From there on in, the struggle is deeply uneven.

Again, as deniers will be quick to point out, there are exceptions who beat the odds; lots of them and their stories command respect. But that does not change the fact that the odds are heavily stacked and show no signs of shortening.

That bleak message was reinforced by this week’s SQA exam results. The attainment gap which was supposed to narrow has reached record levels. It has become such a familiar story that the statistics of difference between affluent and impoverished have lost the power to shock.

The uneducated under-class, it seems, will always be with us. Yet if that is accepted then the consequences must also be lived with. Wasted talent, unfulfilled potential, feckless lifestyles, social costs, abbreviated lives, inter-generational denial of the right to aspire and contribute.

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Are these just realities to be accepted and contained within a box marked 20 per cent? After all, this week’s results showed the great majority of Scottish school pupils performing well with good futures to look forward to. The fact that a substantial minority have no such prospects is one that most of us may avoid, if we look the other way.

Yet it is difficult to avoid these consequences. Educational disadvantage does not stop at the school gates. It not only marginalises its victims but creates costs which society pays for in myriad ways. On a purely utilitarian basis, it is far more efficient for a society to educate its children than to fail them.

These issues are societal and deep-rooted. For that reason, it is trite to place all blame at the door of any government though legitimate to call out failures of policy and the uselessness of idle rhetoric. Equally, those who criticise must be willing to question their own priorities and then act accordingly.

All children are not born equal and if the priority is to apply some degree of redress to that inescapable reality then the process starts at the beginning of life. In any long-term view, that must be the starting point for change. There is ample evidence that an intensive commitment to Early Intervention will make a difference to life prospects in a way nothing else in the education process can.

While outcomes have doubtless been exacerbated by the pandemic and particularly the effects of lockdowns on poor households, all of these questions and potential answers were around long before Covid blew in.

My own personal journey on this subject goes back to 1997 when I became Scottish Education Minister and was invited to a school in Edinburgh which had embarked on a pilot programme of Early Intervention. It recognised that the challenges began in the home rather than the schools.

If the parents didn’t have basic skills, how could they pass them on - a cycle which most were desperate to break but needed help to do so. The drawbacks which each child suffered had to be approached from multiple directions at the youngest possible age. It was a fantastic learning exercise which has stuck with me.

Two things became clear: first, that it worked and second, that it was very resource-intensive. In government, we did a lot at that time to improve early years provision. That ran into resistance because it disturbed the silos of spending priorities within the education budget. Over time, the resources needed to fulfil the potential of Early Intervention eroded.

This is more fundamental than a party political issue and I do not wish to understate the Scottish Government’s efforts or commitment. The question is whether they are enough to make the necessary difference. And that is not a question for government alone.

Rather, it is where the uncomfortable question of priorities kicks in for us all. The one certainty is that the fruits of a wholehearted commitment to Early Intervention will take years, maybe decades, to manifest themselves. There is no short-term fix to inter-generational disadvantage or poverty of aspiration.

Yet time passes quickly. If Early Intervention had been given top billing, for example, at the outset of devolution then I have not the slightest doubt that the exam results published this week would have had a significantly different complexion. So would a lot of other aspects of our society.

Duncan Scott was keen to stress how important it is to support the young (Image: PA)

The question of university access for youngsters from poorer backgrounds would scarcely arise because far more of them would be competing on equal educational terms. Our prisons would not be overcrowded with offenders who are functionally illiterate. Our drug problems would be tempered by ambition over hopelessness.

These are huge prizes for any society but they come at a price and I do not know if it is one which Scotland is willing to pay, through the ballot box. I don’t know if any government will risk throwing the kitchen sink at Early Intervention in order to achieve outcomes which are achievable, but expensive and not without sacrifices.

I am pretty certain though that without that fundamental shift of priorities towards early years, nothing much will change for those in the 20 per cent. Maybe this is something in which we really could become a world leader. The challenge is well defined and indisputable. So too are the costs of the status quo.

Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.