The council's education department analysed attainment levels from 1997 to 1999 using the performance indicators in primary schools (Pips) range of assessments, developed by the University of Durham. There was no evidence that attainment in either reading or mathematics at the start of primary one had risen during this time.
However, a report on the study, Attainment in Aberdeen City Primary Schools P1-P3, points out that the local authority is currently developing aspects of pre-school education that should make a difference in future. New initiatives include targeting full-day nursery places at those most in need, developing the use of speech and language therapy input at pre- school level, extending the use of home-school link teachers to more areas of the city and developing the link between quality facilities for energetic play and pre-school cognitive development in language and maths.
While achievement on entry to primary one had not changed, there was a marked improvement in progress in reading both during primary one and between primary one and primary three. These findings suggest that the early intervention programme, introduced in 1997 to improve basic literacy and numeracy skills in primary one and two and to promote social inclusion, is having a positive impact. New approaches to links with parents, a new emphasis on behaviour and discipline and new materials for teaching reading and phonics were all strategies that contributed to pupils' progress in primary one.
However, while early intervention strategies are improving children's attainment in reading, they are not closing the gap in achievement between children from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds.
The amount of progress children from all backgrounds made in mathematics during primary one improved, though less so for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. In line with national findings, attainment during primary three had not changed, possibly because there has been more emphasis on literacy than numeracy in the first phase of the early intervention programme, both in Aberdeen and in Scotland as a whole. Aberdeen children in primary three showed an increasingly positive attitude to mathematics over the time studied, a result which has not come up in research on Scotland as a whole.
