IT has long been recognised that children from low-income households in Scotland do significantly worse at school than those from better-off homes. At election time especially we might expect to hear even more about the attainment gap in Scottish education and how it might be closed. As ever, though, it’s what lies behind that gap and the factors that continue to hinder the achievement of equity in educational outcomes that needs to be focused on.

It’s significant then that yesterday in Crieff at its 73rd Annual Congress, the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association (SSTA) highlighted yet another factor that needs to be urgently addressed to help close the gap in attainment.

Home advantage refers to the situation whereby some parents are more able than others to provide their own knowledge, have the right equipment, or pay for additional tuition and guidance for their children.

This is nothing new of course. But as the SSTA has made clear, having parts of the National Course Assessments that can be completed at home significantly adds to the gap in attainment that exists between pupils from different backgrounds.

It is for this reason that the SSTA has rightly called on the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) to end a system that has all the hallmarks of an unfair assessment method. As SSTA general secretary Seamus Searson points out, there is a significant anomaly here and, as yet, a failure to address it.

The SSTA is not alone in recognising the massive impact of the home on children’s educational development. For some years, independent organisations lobbying for social change like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have identified that the home and parental socio-economic background has often more influence than the school attended by children. The issue has also been raised by the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Learned Societies Group on STEM education, which has been examining changes to science qualifications.

Other findings show children from low income or deprived households leave school earlier and that low attainment is strongly linked to destinations after school, with long-term effects on job prospects.

For its part the Scottish Government has placed a particular focus on closing the poverty-related attainment gap. It 2015 it launched the £750 million Attainment Scotland Fund, that seeks to accelerate improvements in literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing in specific areas of Scotland.

This is to be welcomed. But as the SSTA has highlighted, structural issues and challenges remain when it comes to the qualification system with home advantage working to the benefit of only some children.

Increasing and maintaining the emphasis on educational equity requires focused policy-making and practice. Scotland’s educators needs to improve its knowledge sharing and provide better evaluation to help distinguish between proven and unproven approaches.

Having home advantage is in itself not a bad thing. The qualifications system, however, should not be weighted in such a way as to reward those children who have it at the expense of those who do not.