to be astonished at the Highland secondary schools' underperformance?

[ImOnAnAdjectiveSearch]

I was just reading The Times and there's several Highland schools with 0% deprivation scores achieving very poorly. I know quite a bit about city centre schools but this is news to me.

Can anyone comment?!

(Unhelpfully, I can't find the data on Education Scotland's site and there's a paywall on the Times).

I think there are two problems with rural attainment that the government could do more to address. 1. Use different measurements of poverty. As one of the posters states above if there is a dependence on areas of poverty, rather than individual circumstances, then the official stats will often show that there isn't any poverty in rural areas because the nature of villages means that the child growing up in a family with no money could be living next door to people who are in full time employment. 2. Make it easier for pupils from rural areas to access University - many of the access schemes are dependent on partnership schools but there are huge gaps in coverage. A poster makes mention of this above - she lives in Argyll but sent her child to school in Glasgow, where she found Glasgow Uni had links with the school. No links though with the Argyll school. Friends also tell me about problems with recruitment of teachers - many have trained in the central belt and want to work there. Throw in limited subject choices and it can be very difficult for kids from rural areas to access Uni courses.

A couple of generations ago the smart kids got sent to allocated state boarding grammar schools. So there were academic schooling opportunities to all the rural kids. Now they are all at what are effectively secondary moderns (called junior schools in Scotland)

Our local secondary school has really gone downhill since my kids left - useless HT and a revolving door of staff. Now they can't offer certain subjects as there just aren't the teachers. This isn't in a rural area but a school of around 900 pupils. The HT has thankfully left - to a bigger school ironically - so we'll see if there is any improvement.

One of the issues is that around S3/4 pupils have no motivation as they know they'll get a well paying job offshore or when that dies the death, in renewables.

Our local secondary school has really gone downhill since my kids left
I know you didn't mean this the way I read it, @RaraRachael but it made me laugh!

Oh yes @MistressIggi I can see how it could read 🤣