A Tes Scotland investigation has uncovered more than eight years of school inspection findings - including that just seven schools have received the top rating for learning, teaching and assessment since the current inspection framework was introduced in 2016.
Opposition politicians say the data is evidence of Scottish government “mismanagement”.
Labour education spokesperson Pam Duncan-Glancy said schools were “working tirelessly to boost standards” but were being failed. Conservative education spokesperson Miles Briggs said the government had caused a “crisis” in Scottish schools.
Inspection system ‘not fit for purpose’
The EIS teaching union has also hit out at the government in response to the data, saying that over “successive years” it has failed to invest in education, resulting in schools having “to do more with less”.
General secretary Andrea Bradley called for “the insidious practice of labelling schools through simplistic grading processes” to end - and warned that the current inspection regime is not fit for purpose.
Figures obtained by Tes Scotland show that 1,269 schools were inspected and received a rating for the quality of their learning, teaching and assessment between September 2016 - when the current inspection regime got underway - and 11 February 2025.
In total, just seven schools were rated “excellent” for learning, teaching and assessment (0.6 per cent); 189 were “very good” (14.9 per cent); 607 “good” (47.8 per cent); 373 “satisfactory” (29.4 per cent); 90 “weak” (7.1 per cent) and three “unsatisfactory” (0.2 per cent).
Earlier this year Hyndland Secondary School in Glasgow hit the headlines when it became the first secondary school to receive an “excellent” rating for its learning, teaching and assessment.
The other schools to receive “excellent” ratings for learning, teaching and assessment include five primaries and one special school.
When Hyndland received its rating, interim chief inspector Janie McManus told Tes Scotland that the bar for “excellent” was high “by design”, but that “very good” was a level “all schools can achieve”.
The data clearly shows, however, that this remains an aspiration for many schools, with just 15.4 per cent of those inspected achieving a grade of “very good” or better for learning, teaching and assessment.
The other key quality indicator that the government tracks via its National Improvement Framework - designed to monitor the performance of the education system - is “raising attainment and achievement”.
On the government’s online National Improvement Framework Interactive Evidence Report, the most up-to-date data for both indicators dates back to 2019-20 - despite a promise that the dashboard will be “updated quarterly as more up-to-date statistics become available”.
However, Tes Scotland can reveal that over the period from September 2016 to February 2025, 1,338 schools received a rating for “raising attainment and achievement”. Again, however, fewer than one in five inspected schools received a rating of “very good” or better (16.4 per cent). A total of 13 schools were rated “excellent”.
The full breakdown of the data for “raising attainment and achievement” is: 13 schools were rated “excellent” (1 per cent); 206 rated “very good” (15.4 per cent); 611 “good” (45.7 per cent); 387 “satisfactory” (28.9 per cent); 117 “weak” (8.7 per cent); and four “unsatisfactory” (0.3 per cent).
‘Urgently needed’ reforms
Mr Briggs said: “This comprehensive data starkly illustrates the SNP’s failure to tackle the crisis they’ve caused in Scottish schools.”
He said the figures should be “a source of shame for ministers”, and called on the government to “stop dithering over urgently needed reforms” and to set out “how they plan to reverse the damaging decline their policies have inflicted”.
In 2021 the Scottish government announced plans to reform Scotland’s key education bodies, including splitting the functions of Education Scotland to create an independent inspectorate and a reformed education agency. However, the plans have been beset by delay.
Two recruitment drives have resulted in failure to recruit a new chief inspector of education or a new chief executive for the reformed Education Scotland.
There are also fears about the halting progress of the Education (Scotland) Bill through the Scottish Parliament. It will deliver the new inspectorate and the new qualifications body, but MSPs have been lodging hundreds of amendments.
Ms Duncan-Glancy said one key concern about the bill is its failure to give enough independence to the inspectorate.
She described the new inspection data as “worrying”, adding that “whilst our schools, staff and pupils are let down and unsupported, children from the poorest backgrounds are hardest hit and the attainment gap persists”.
Schools ‘asked to do more with less’
Ms Bradley said there has been a “lack of sufficient resource” in education over “successive years” - at a time when the challenges that schools face are “intensifying” due to increasing poverty and additional support needs.
“Year upon year, schools and teachers have been asked to do more with less,” she said.
Ms Bradley described the current inspection model as “an exercise in top-down accountability, underpinned by insufficiency of professional trust, which places performativity agendas above quality teaching and learning”.
She called for “an end to the insidious practice of labelling schools through simplistic grading processes”.
Ms Bradley said: “The bald system of scoring fosters an ethos of competition and fear of failure rather than of confidence, innovation and collaboration - which should underpin delivery of Curriculum for Excellence.”
She added: “If scoring continues to feature in the publication of reports, then the EIS believes that the requisite culture change highlighted in recent education reform reports - and which is so badly needed in the context of inspection - will not be achieved.”
A review of Scotland’s school inspection system is underway, after it was announced by Ms McManus in an exclusive Tes Scotland interview in 2024.
She said nothing would be off the table and that the current inspection framework - the fourth edition of How Good is Our School? - needed updating. It has been in place since 2015.
A Scottish government spokesperson said that How Good is Our School? sets “a rigorous standard, requiring schools to demonstrate sector-leading practice that is deeply embedded, consistently sustained, and making a measurable impact on all children and young people”.
They said there had been a three per cent real terms increase in the education resource budget to over £3.2 billion, and it was continuing to fund the £1 billion Scottish Attainment Challenge “as part of our key priority to close the poverty-related attainment gap”.
The spokesperson added: “As a result of sustained investment, Scotland has record level of literacy and numeracy in schools, the lowest attainment gap since records began for literacy in primary schools and record number of young people entering work, training, college and university.
“The Education (Scotland) Bill will establish the office of His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education in Scotland, with enhanced independence, to undertake the education inspection functions which currently sit within Education Scotland. It will be a matter for the new body how it takes forward the process of inspections and the wider engagement around this.”
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