Students’ attainment gap

Young people from lower-income households' attainment levels have become a significant concern for Scottish authorities.

The gap between higher and lower-income students at National 4 levels has increased to 7.3%, up from 6% before the pandemic.

More than twice as many pupils from higher-income families progressed to higher education after secondary school.

School can be a struggle for many, as various issues can make it hard to focus and even force students to skip classes to address them.

For SCQF level 6 students, the gap between students from affluent backgrounds and those from poorer ones is at 37.7%.

Highers and equivalents are subjects you must be in at least the 4th year to take, and many people in lower-income families leave school before that to pursue things that will get them into work quicker, like apprenticeships and lower-income jobs.

School classroom - Shannon Walker

So, what are schools offering to help those who struggle with education?

Callum Maclellan, the principal teacher of behaviour support at Carluke High School, said: “What we did early on in the year was we identified a group of young people who were finding school difficult. Now, school is not for everybody, we understand that, but we identified the young people who weren't on track to pass the qualifications.

“South Lanarkshire Council has an expectation that young people get 5 awards and 1 at level 5, so we take that as our benchmark and looked at the young people who weren't on track for that, and we decided to do our attainment recovery programme.

“We're helping them recover their education and get them up to the standard we expect the rest of their peers to be at. But we do it a different way because these young people have found the challenges of school difficult; whether it's just going to class, sitting in class for that time, or just a class setting, it's just something that they're not comfortable doing.

“We took it out of the school and down here (street level) where we do the work, where it's short, sharp and sweet, so they come down, get a bit of breakfast, and then they go and do some learning, which gives them an opportunity for more one to one support. It’s more individualised, it’s more focused, and quite quickly you see the young people engage in that”.

Street Level is an organisation partially funded by churches in and around Carluke whose goal is to “empower young people to achieve their potential.”

The organisation was created to combat antisocial behaviour amongst young people in Carluke.

Certificate awarded at recent award ceremony

In 2025, Police Scotland Lanarkshire took to Facebook to address antisocial behaviour in Carluke, urging parents to speak to their children about it.

In the statement, they said: "Local residents and visitors to the area have been left feeling intimidated and vulnerable due to the noise and abusive behaviour of these individuals.”

But the community were quick to share their outrage at the post, with many complaining that the police take too long to arrive.

Maclellan said: “What we were told by the police at that point was that the Carluke and Lanark area in particular, for an age demographic of 13-16, had a crime rate equalling that of neighbouring towns of Glasgow like Easterhouse and Drumchapel, which really took us back, and what we found with that demographic there was something like 73% of criminal charges for people in the west of Scotland came from our area for that age demographic.”

Police Scotland - @policescotlandofficial Instagram

Food poverty is also a huge issue in Scotland, with single-parent families being the most affected by the issue, with 34% of single parents reporting that they were worried they would not have enough resources to feed their children for the month and single fathers using food banks the most.

A poor diet or insufficient nutrition can negatively affect how well the brain processes information and how it develops.

Those who eat ultra-processed foods, which are often cheaper, may experience poor memory, emotional imbalance, and poor concentration.

Maclellan spoke on the issue, he said: “We know we’re having a time of austerity right now, and we know families are struggling, and I can understand why, so we offer when they come in a hot breakfast, and then on the foody Friday it’s an opportunity to come get nice food like pizzas, hotdogs and whatever but we do a lot of things as well with families to support them and to try and take the stigma away from it, so we do. We get foodbank referrals for us, and then we distribute that amongst families.

“I think some of the programmes we offer, particularly over Easter and the summer, we know that's quite a difficult time for parents to keep young people engaged. The school funds some of that street-level programme, so we're offering these programmes completely free of charge.”

There are plenty of initiatives in place to combat low attainment levels, so hopefully we will begin to see a change and bring them up to a similar level.