Covid Helensburgh: Pandemic 'will affect schools for some time', says education chief

Simone McAdam, acting head of education with Argyll and Bute Council, said so in response to a councillor’s concerns at downward trends in attainment in the area’s primary schools.

Helensburgh Central Councillor Gary Mulvaney’s question related to a report that showed falling figures for literacy and numeracy, although the Helensburgh and Lomond figures were superior to Argyll and Bute as a whole, and to Scotland.

The discussion took place at a meeting of the council’s Helensburgh and Lomond Area Committee on Tuesday, June 14.

Councillor Mulvaney said: “Certainly the report was very good reading. When you reflect, our performance in Helensburgh and Lomond, against both Scotland and the rest of the authority, is much better.

“But the question which would probably arise is on where you are expecting to see these trends a year on.

“If you look at all the graphs, from 2016/17, even pre-pandemic, the general trend was not upwards. It has either been flatlining or going down.

“What sort of expectations are you picking up from head teachers, and working as to where we should expect the trend to be when we get this report in a year’s time?

“Pre-pandemic the trend has gone down, as it has in Scotland, but we need to see it going back up and getting back to and over where we were three or four years ago.

“The general feeling is that the education system is not as strong as it was a number of years ago and I get concerns from parents and others. What is your expectation?”

Ms McAdam replied: “It is difficult to answer because one thing to keep in mind is that the cohorts we are comparing are not like for like. We are seeing trends going up in some curricular areas.

“We are expecting that we will be in recovery for a period of time, so a lot of things we are putting in place to ensure schools are supported in helping their young people and putting in interventions as needed.

“There was a really big focus on health and wellbeing and ensuring pupils are prepared for learning after a really tough period when they were not able to be in school.

“We have a progress and achievement model where schools put in information centrally at three points during the year and are monitoring this on an authority and school basis. We can also get it down to a pupil basis.

“We need to use all the tools available to us to look at what attainment will look like going forward. We are cautiously optimistic but we are going to see the impact of Covid for a period to come.”