School leaver destinations and personal skills development: consultation analysis

1. Background

1.1 Personal Skills Development (PSD) statistics

Scottish Government currently publish statistics on initial destinations of school leavers in Summary Statistics for Attainment and Initial Leaver Destinations in February and follow-up destinations of school leavers in the publication Summary Statistics for Follow-up Leaver Destinations in June.

Following feedback from users of these statistics we consulted on a possible change to the way in which school leavers participating in Personal Skills Development (PSD) should be classified. The consultation document can be found in Annex A.

PSD includes a wide range of what will often be short-term learning and development combined with appropriate personalised support for young people not yet ready, or in the position (for any number of valid reasons), to participate in school, further education, higher education, training or employment.

Historically, young people participating in PSD were mapped to a destination category in school leaver destination statistics based on details of the activity recorded on the Skills Development Scotland (SDS) shared dataset. Depending on the evidence they may have been recorded in a positive destination or in an unemployed destination. This required a judgement to be made by SDS and SG staff based on detailed consideration of specific cases and differed from the approach taken in the Annual Participation Measure reported by Skills Development Scotland, which reports all PSD activity as participating.

1.2 Stakeholder consultation scope

The stakeholder consultation sought views on the proposal to record all school leavers undertaking Personal Skills Development as being in a positive destination in a new category.

The questionnaire incorporated two sections:

• Background information of respondents
• Views on possible change in recording Personal Skills Development

The stakeholder consultation ran from the 3^rd to the 25^th of October 2019. The consultation was circulated to Local Authority Directors of Education, ScotStat users with a registered interest in education, and other known users of school leaver statistics.