Scotland’s exam results for 2026 confirm Nicola Sturgeon’s “betrayal” of Scotland’s poorest pupils, the Scottish Conservatives have said.
Education spokesperson Meghan Gallacher praised pupils for their incredible hard work over the last year and says they should be proud for the fantastic results they achieved in what was a challenging year in Scotland’s schools.
However, she says education secretary Mairi McAllan cannot be complacent about the results and no amount of spin can hide the SNP’s broken promises on the poverty-related attainment gap.
In a major speech in 2015, Sturgeon said her aim was to close the attainment gap completely.
The SNP’s 2016 Programme for Government, when John Swinney was education secretary, also promised to have “substantially eliminated” the attainment gap by 2026.
The exam results for 2026 show that the gap between the most and least deprived pupils at National 5 level stood at 15.6%, while at Higher it was 15.9% and at Advanced Higher the gap is 12.1%.
The SNP have also made “painfully slow progress” in reducing the attainment gap for pupils achieving A grades since prior to the pandemic, with the gap widening at Advanced Higher level and only reducing by 0.4% for Higher exams and 1.5% for National 5s.
Meghan Gallacher says that Sturgeon and Swinney owe pupils from Scotland’s most deprived communities an urgent apology and that two decades of SNP failures means Scotland’s once world-leading reputation for educational excellence is in ruins.
Scottish Conservative education spokesperson Meghan Gallacher MSP said: “Congratulations to Scotland’s pupils for achieving a fantastic set of results that they should be extremely proud of.
“They have worked incredibly hard over the last year to achieve them and have done so against a backdrop of another challenging year in Scotland’s schools.
“Despite the wonderful achievements of our young people, SNP ministers have absolutely no room for complacency. No amount of spin can hide the fact that the results confirm Nicola Sturgeon’s betrayal of Scotland’s poorest pupils.
“She wanted to eradicate the poverty-related attainment gap and promised to have substantially eliminated it by 2026. Sturgeon and this SNP government have miserably failed to do so.
“They have made painfully slow progress in reducing it since the pandemic and on the nationalists’ watch, it is clear far too many of Scotland’s pupils are still facing a postcode lottery when it comes to their chances of educational achievement.
“Sturgeon and Swinney should do the right thing and apologise to those pupils in our most deprived communities. Two decades of failure from the SNP means Scotland’s reputation for providing a gold standard of education no longer exists.
“The Scottish Conservatives believes every pupil should be able to achieve the best possible results, no matter their background or where they live and we will hold this SNP government to account for their broken promises.”
Notes:
There continues to be an attainment gap between the most and least deprived students. In 2026, the gap between the most and least deprived pupils obtaining an A-C grade at National 5, was 15.6%, at Higher this was 15.9%, whilst at Advanced Higher this was 12.1%. (SQA Equalities Monitoring Report 2026, 4 August 2026, link).
There has been little progress in reducing the attainment gap for pupils achieving an A grade since the pandemic. In 2026, the gap between the most and least deprived pupils obtaining an A grade at National 5 had only reduced by 1.5% on 2019 levels, at Higher this was 0.4%, whilst at Advanced Higher the gap had widened by 1.3%. (SQA Equalities Monitoring Report 2025, 5 August 2025, link; SQA Equalities Monitoring Report 2026, 4 August 2026, link).