When We Call a Council “Worst Performing”, What Are We Really Measuring?

The Results Matter, But So Does the Context

There is much to celebrate in Scotland’s 2026 examination results.

Higher pass rates increased to 76.7%, while National 5 and Advanced Higher pass rates also rose. The poverty-related attainment gap narrowed, and more than 120,000 vocational and technical qualifications were awarded, a record high.

Those achievements matter.

Behind every percentage point are young people who studied, worried, persevered and, in many cases, overcame significant challenges.

But national success can exist alongside persistent inequality.

Scottish Government data published earlier this year showed that among school leavers in 2024 to 2025, the gap between young people from the most and least deprived areas achieving at least one National Qualification at SCQF Level 6 or above was 37.7 percentage points.

That is not a small difference.

And it should make us cautious about interpreting examination results as though every young person began from the same starting point.

Education Is Not Experienced Equally

I explored this issue in my postgraduate study of educational inequality in Scotland.

One of the ideas that has stayed with me most strongly comes from Pierre Bourdieu.

Bourdieu (1986) challenged the assumption that educational success is simply the result of intelligence, effort or individual merit. He argued that children enter education carrying different forms of economic, cultural and social capital.

Economic capital might mean having money for tutoring, technology, transport, books, activities or simply a quiet place to study.

Cultural capital can include familiarity with the language, expectations and unwritten rules of education.

Social capital includes the networks and relationships that help families know who to ask, where to look and how to navigate educational systems.

These advantages accumulate.

My own paper argued that education systems can reproduce existing inequalities by rewarding resources and ways of communicating that are more readily available to some families than others.

None of this means that disadvantaged children cannot succeed.

Of course they can.

It means that success may require considerably more navigation, resilience and support.

The Problem With “Choice”

We often talk about educational pathways as though young people simply choose them.

Choose Highers.

Choose university.

Choose college.

Choose an apprenticeship.

But choices are never made in a vacuum.

Diane Reay’s research on social class and education is particularly important here. Reay (2017) shows how young people’s experiences and educational choices are shaped not only by individual aspiration, but by class, family circumstances and their sense of what feels possible or “for people like me”.

In my own research and professional experience, this has made me question the language of choice.

A young person who has parents familiar with university applications, access to tutoring, reliable transport, a laptop, professional networks and confidence dealing with institutions is technically making a choice.

So is the young person without those things.

But they are not choosing from identical positions.

My paper explored this through Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and Reay’s work, arguing that educational choices are socially structured rather than entirely autonomous.

That matters when we begin ranking communities by attainment.

What Does a Pass Rate Actually Tell Us?

There is another question we rarely ask.

Who is being presented for Higher qualifications in the first place?

A council or school presenting a broader range of young people for Higher examinations might potentially have a lower overall pass percentage than one that enters a more selective group.

That does not automatically make the first school or council less successful.

Likewise, one area may have more young people pursuing vocational qualifications, Foundation Apprenticeships, college pathways or other forms of learning.

Scotland recorded more than 120,000 vocational and technical awards in 2026, an increase of 9.1% on the previous year.

If we judge educational success primarily through Higher pass rates, where do those achievements sit?

This question matters deeply to me because I work with young people undertaking Foundation Apprenticeships.

I have seen highly capable young people thrive when learning is connected to practice, relationships and meaningful experience.

Their ability did not suddenly appear when they entered a vocational pathway.

The pathway simply allowed a different form of ability to become visible.

My earlier academic work raised precisely this concern. Expanding educational pathways does not automatically create equality if some routes continue to be viewed as more prestigious or valuable than others.

Perhaps We Are Asking the Wrong Question

So rather than asking:

Which councils are performing worst?

Perhaps we should ask:

Why are educational outcomes still so strongly associated with where children live and the resources available to their families?

What opportunities existed before the exam?

Did the young person have stable housing?

Did they have somewhere quiet to study?

Could their family afford broadband, transport or extracurricular experiences?

Did they have consistent access to additional support?

Did someone understand the education system well enough to advocate for them?

Did they believe university was somewhere they belonged?

Were vocational pathways presented as genuine opportunities, or as alternatives for those perceived as “less academic”?

And perhaps most importantly:

What did the education system do to compensate for inequalities it did not create, but inevitably inherited?

These are harder questions than producing a league table.

But they are far more useful.

This Is Not About Lowering Expectations

Talking about structural inequality is sometimes misunderstood as making excuses.

I see it very differently.

Recognising inequality does not mean expecting less from children.

It means expecting more from systems.

I want every young person to encounter high expectations.

But high expectations without equitable support are not equality.

Giving every child the same thing is not always fair when children begin with profoundly different resources.

If one young person arrives at the starting line carrying advantages accumulated over generations, while another arrives carrying poverty, insecurity or limited access to educational capital, treating them identically does not make the race fair.

Beyond the League Table

There is encouraging news within Scotland’s latest results.

Attainment is improving nationally, the poverty-related gap has narrowed, and increasing numbers of young people are gaining vocational and technical qualifications.

That progress deserves recognition.

But narrowing a gap is not the same as eliminating it.

And describing communities as “worst performing” risks placing the language of failure onto schools, teachers, families and young people without adequately acknowledging the circumstances within which education takes place.

Data should help us identify inequality.

It should not become another way of labelling the people experiencing it.

So when the next education league table appears, perhaps we should look beyond who sits at the top and who sits at the bottom.

Because the most important question is not simply:

Who achieved the highest results?

It is:

What would we need to change so that where a child begins no longer has such power over where they can go?

That, for me, is the conversation worth having.