East Dunbartonshire’s schools are continuing to ensure excellence and equity for all young people at all exam levels. Pupils from all areas, including those from areas classified as high deprivation, perform very well.
A report detailing the results attained across the authority area in 2015, 2016 and 2017 was recently presented to the Education Committee.
The report highlighted the measurements of attainment v deprivation through the use of the national online benchmarking tool ‘Insight’. Through ‘Insight’ schools can self-evaluate their results against other schools within their authority area and those of a virtual school which reflect the results of young people from across Scotland who have a similar social and attainment profile.
‘Insight’ uses the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation scale which goes from 1 to 10. The 10% most deprived areas are known as decile 1 and the 10% least deprived areas are decile 10. The attainment gap between pupils in SIMD 1 and SIMD 10 across all East Dunbartonshire Secondary Schools is not as significant as with the virtual comparator.
The ‘Insight’ findings showed that in East Dunbartonshire in 2015-17:
- S4 pupils performed better than the virtual comparator in SCQF Level 3, 4 & 5
- S5 pupils performed better than the virtual comparator in gaining 1+, 3+ & 5+ Highers
- S6 pupils performed better than the national average in gaining 3+ Highers *
- S6 pupils performed better than the national average in gaining 1+ Advanced Highers*.
Convener of Education, Councillor Mohrag Fischer, welcomed the findings. She said, “We are very proud of our record of having some of the top performing schools in the country and this year’s exam results were exceptional once again.
“Boclair Academy in particular saw notable increases in their pass rates among S5 pupils with 40% of students gaining 5+Highers. Bishopbriggs Academy was the best performing school in East Dunbartonshire with impressive performances across the board.
“This report not only highlights the excellent exam results, but also the success ensuring equity for all young people. This is partly due to rigorous analysis carried out on the attainment information received from the SQA and the sharing of good practice across all our schools in order to support continuous improvement.”
Cllr Fischer continued, “It is extremely important that we equip our young people with the very best start that we possibly can and I am pleased that within East Dunbartonshire we are seeing such positive results within our schools.
“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our teachers and officers within the education service who continually develop and improve practices to ensure our pupils are given every opportunity to reach their true potential.”
*no virtual comparator figures available
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