Dundee schools have been told they need to make greater efforts to improve exam results.
The order has come from city council education director Michael Wood after an analysis of the test scores achieved by pupils this summer.
Performance at Standard Grade was up, but fifth-year pupils did not do as well in their Highers. There were rises in attainment by the end of sixth year.
In a report to councillors, Mr Wood said exam results had generally been rising in recent years.
He adds: “However, there is no room for complacency and a clear recognition at school and council level that there is continued scope for further improvement.”
He wants to see schools make better use of the new curriculum to raise the quality of learning and teaching.
Other measures that “remain firmly in place” to drive up standards include the use of target setting by subject teachers at secondary schools and the use of a common electronic system to track pupils’ performance.
Schools will go through their results with education department officials to identify areas of strength and weakness.
Mr Wood said: “Head teachers will also work with individual principal teachers of subjects to analyse performance at school level, then compare this with pupil performance at local and national level.”
The exam results data is pre-appeal and may change once pupils have had a chance to claim they did unexpectedly badly for some reason and deserve to have their marks raised.
One of the key targets the council set was to have 90% of fourth-year pupils pass English and maths at Access 3/Standard Grade foundation level. That was achieved this year thanks to a 2% rise in the pass rate. A new target of 93% has now been set for future years.
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There was also a 2% rise to 88% in the proportion of pupils passing five or more Standard Grades at general level and a 1% rise to 26% in the proportion passing five or more at credit level.
Mr Wood said: “Progress has been made but it is recognised that there is headroom for further improvement and this is a focus area across our schools.”
He said performance by fifth-year pupils at Higher were “broadly in line” with last year, although comparisons with past years were difficult because many pupils now took Intermediate courses or did Highers over two years.
Some 36% of pupils passed at least one Higher this summer, the same as last year, but there was a 2% drop to 18% in the proportion passing three or more and a 1% drop to 8% in the proportion passing five or more.
Mr Wood said results by the end of sixth year set out a clearer picture of overall performance.
He said: “This year’s performance has seen significant improvement in all measures. It is particularly pleasing to note that 20% of our S6 pupils now leave school with five Highers or more and 30% leave with three Highers or more.”
A new target of having 33% of pupils leave with at least three Highers has been set.
The director said there had also been a “slow but steady rise” in results at Advanced Higher and a “positive” performance among the small number of pupils who take Baccalaureates in science or languages.
Reflecting on the overall performance, he said the challenge for the education department, schools and staff was to ensure that the success of recent years was consolidated and extended.
Teachers, parents and pupils needed to have “consistently high expectations” of what could be achieved and schools needed to ensure they shared good practice and took action to remedy problems, the director said.
Laurie Bidwell, Labour group education spokesman, said: “I am sure it is not just councillors, but parents and carers too, who will want to see the figures for each secondary school and for each subject.
“We have also yet to see the results in Dundee in a wider context, so we need to know how they compare with those in other council areas and how they measure up with the national average.”
He said he welcomed the “cautious tone” of Mr Wood’s report and endorsed “the ongoing emphasis on raising attainment” and “reiteration of the route map to further improvement”.