Possible move to Scotland from England but should we be concerned about education?

[Wouldliketomove]

Hello Everyone,

As the title says, DH and I are carefully researching a possible move to Scotland for our family (two toddlers currently) but I am constantly reading worrying things about education in Scotland. I'm aware there are also soon to be significant changes, which complicates things further and introduces more unknowns.

Can anyone with experience either as teachers or parents offer a perspective on education in Scotland at the moment please or any further insight into what is to come? I have tried to read what is widely available.

Thanks very much in advance

above should have said 3 AH or 2 and 2 Highers. Sometimes a kid will do an AH in S5 (usually maths) and also 4 AH so have seen kids leave school with 5 AH but obviously they aren’t your typical kid. Mine both did 3.

I'm actually watching an Italian TV series on Netflix at the moment. It's about a group of children in what's portrayed as a standard state middle school - so aged about 12 or 13. You see them in one of their English lessons. The lesson is fully in English (the teacher is American) and they're reading Shakespeare.

Where did the leap to Italian kids being illiterate come from? At 474, they are still above the
OECD average. I agree that Scottish kids should definitely be able to cope with the same standard of literature if the Pisa ranking differential is anything to go by.

Yeah, I’m always bemused by dramas set in American schools that make them seem really academic establishments but the reality seems to be something different. I suppose poetic
license makes things more interesting and it makes it obvious to the audience what class it is.

What? My kids read widely for the Higher English, yours did not. I don’t have to answer your utterly ridiculous questions.

Again, AHs are a higher level qualification than A levels. Just because you disagree and discussed it upthread it doesn’t make it true. Maybe you should take higher English, improve your reading comprehension.

It’s absolutely not the case that stem subjects in Scottish unis need higher English! My daughter’s friends that skipped higher English (of which there are loads) include vet science, medicine, astrophysics, computer science, biochemistry and various iterations of engineering. Mainly Glasgow / Strathclyde / Edinburgh. Maybe St Andrews wants higher English? Don’t know anyone who wanted to go there.

Reading comprehension is one of my top strengths, actually.
Just because you're read on some document from Scotgov, or even UCAS, that AH is a higher level qualification, doesn't take away from the fact that is is in reality easier than A'level.
It's magical thinking. We know that children in Scotland start school a bit later than in England. We know that they spend a lot of primary school playing, and generally have a very relaxed time of it, with little or even no homework and no testing. We know that the first few years of secondary are very relaxed, with little homework and no testing. We know that there isn't much content in Nat 5s and Highers. We know that Advanced Highers is then started at the same age as A'levels, but lasts for only 1 year, not 2. We know from all the education threads on Scotsnet that people always and only say that the level of education in Scotland is lower than in England, with children in England being years ahead. And yet somehow, magically, the 1 year Advanced Higher teaches more than a 2 year A'level does, with 17 year olds in Scotland ending up more academically advanced than 18 year olds in England.

Why is one year of higher and one year of advanced higher in the same subject less than 2 years of A levels? Because there are fewer teaching hours in S6 as it’s split over 5 subjects? Wouldn’t that means someone who did a lot of GCSEs had no more teaching time per subject than a Scottish pupils doing fewer, even if they have 5 years of secondary before sitting those exams.

No, you don't have to and you clearly don't want to. Why don't you just tell us how many full books your children read for English Higher? Was it five or six or was it one or two?

And you still haven't commented on how the English Higher curriculum compares with the final school year Italian literature curriculum in Italy. Do you still think that Scottish children are stretched? Do you still think that they leave school well-educated?

I wonder why the Pisa ready score in Italy is so much lower than the Scottish one. Did your friend say anything about that?

I don’t want to reply to your stupid questions. Why would I waste my time?

GCSEs last for 2 years, whereas Highers last for 1. And yes, people study 5 Highers but only 3 A'levels. But it's also relevant that A'level English literature is simply higher level than Higher English. More is expected of pupils at that level - for instance tougher books, more in-depth analysis, tougher essays, etc. The Aqa A'level includes independent work as well as 5.5 hours of exams. The independent work is an extended essay of 2,500 words - that's for 20% of the marks.
It's much more realistic to compare AH with A'level. There's more to the A'level - much more reading and teaching, and about twice the amount of exam time.

It’s official assessed position, hardly magical thinking. The age thing you raise is misleading as the cut off dates for school entry are very different.

I don’t understand what you mean. Higher plus AH is 2 years. Why is AH maths less content that A levels maths? The curriculum is slightly different but there is still 2 years of study.

I see, so commenting on the difference between the Italian curriculum and the Scottish curriculum (which you can see in black and white from an Italian website) would be a waste of your time. I can't imagine why you might think that...

Or, you know, you could accept that Scottish children really don't learn very much, that we're doing them a disservice to assume that they're not capable of it, that that's not a good thing for either them or Scotland, and that we should do something about it.

My DC had to produce a 4000 word lab report or AH physics, I think was 25% of the mark

I don't want to diss AH. I think it's the best we've got, and as I've said upthread it was the best part of school for my DC. I'd encourage more children to do it.

I don’t understand the comparison with Italy. As we are talking literature then the closest Pisa measure is “reading” and when we are giving Scottish education a kicking (and I agree it’s far from perfect) then we are generally happy to talk Pisa. According to the BBC website, the Italian Pisa score for reading is 474 vs 488 in Scotland. English equivalent is 497 so if the conclusion from that 9 point difference is that Scotland is pish compared to England then Italy at 14 points below is even more pish compared to Scotland. Or is the more relevant measure here doing to a friend’s daughter and a TV programme because that seems somewhat insubstantial to me.

Can we all agree:

1. Scottish education is getting much worse - see PISA and people’s experiences.
2. Violence in Scottish schools is getting worse - see Scottish teacher’s reports.
3. The Scottish government are ignoring these problems.

The big issue for me is if someone is genuinely let down, actually disadvantaged by their experience. The flexibility of the Scottish system has actually served some people I know well as being a teenager is difficult and they have been able navigate some difficult events without everything going completely off-road. For some those I know in England, it’s been much more difficult to keep things going.

It’s clear from this thread that some people’s DC have had a poor experience. I went to a rural school and if the local offer wasn’t any good then you were stuck with it. My DCs have had a far better start that I have and are doing really well, I’m so pleased for them - everyone should be able to feel as though that was their DC’s experience and that’s clearly not the case.

I understand that violence is getter worse from
what is reported in the news. Thankfully it’s not something my 2 have ever talked about, parents don’t talk about it and so my direct experience isn’t one where that is reflected and it’s not something that people I know have spoken about. I do assume this makes me fortune however and this isn’t a typical experience.

No I’m not going to comment on something with limited relevance.

My experience of my DCs schooling was that teachers are much more involved, pastoral care is better and school itself seemed more focused on the child and my DCs came out of their school more confident and well rounded than I was at their age. But then I was struggling with OCD and it would never have occurred to me to speak to anyone about it, least of all someone at school.

violence is very much getting far, far worse.

www.theguardian.com/education/2025/feb/06/scotland-schools-pupil-violence-increase