I will try to say something about the detail. Colleagues who are more expert in explaining what we know about the causal factors may also be able to contribute.
In Scotland, our primary focus is the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, which is an area-based measure. It is helpful, but quite a blunt instrument, as members of the Parliament and of this committee have observed before, because most families in poverty do not live in those areas, and even within those areas most people are not in poverty. The index is therefore a broad measure.
Accepting that note of caution, we have taken one indicator from the Improvement Service, which is a really useful local government benchmarking framework, and have looked at the number of pupils getting five passes at national level 5—a more demanding target than getting at least one pass, which is one of the measures that the Government uses.
That indicator shows that attainment level of the best-performing authorities is well over double that of the least well-performing authorities. The best-performing authorities are some of the usual suspects, and we looked at children who live in deprived areas within those authorities. There is also quite an interesting mix of west of Scotland local authorities with high rates of child poverty that are doing relatively well on that measure. At the other end of the spectrum, performing less well, where the odds of attaining that level are less than one in three, there is a mix of city and very rural authorities, and it is hard to see what they have in common.
It may not be a satisfying answer to your question, but that suggests to us that it is absolutely to do with how schools organise and collaborate, and that it is likely to do with how they relate to families and communities. It may be about resourcing, but it may have as much to do with how resources are deployed within schools as it does with absolute levels of resourcing. It is also to do with not just having good data—we are getting increasingly good data—but how data is used.
A know-how question is used in schools to spot children who are off track. For example, in rural authorities there might be schools with a small number of children on free school meals who—in the past, at least—could be almost invisible in those school systems. We do not have the excuse of not knowing.
The challenges are employing the data well, targeting our resources well and ensuring that children who really should be attaining more get back on track. Data is important, but we must go beyond the SIMD as a measure, which I think is what the national improvement framework aspires to do.