Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels

Scotland’s Chief Statistician has today published statistics on school pupils’ achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels in reading, writing, listening & talking and numeracy. The statistics, based on teacher judgement, report on the percentage of school pupils in Primary 1 (P1), Primary 4 (P4), Primary 7 (P7) and Secondary 3 (S3) who have achieved the expected CfE level relevant to their stage.

The percentage of pupils achieving the expected CfE Level has increased slightly across most organisers (reading, writing, listening & talking and numeracy) and stages (P1, P4, P7 and S3) compared to previous years; the overall pattern of performance is similar to that reported in the 2017/18 results.

The proportion of pupils achieving the CfE level relevant to their stage is slightly higher in P1 than the later primary stages. For example, in numeracy, 85% of P1 pupils achieved Early Level, 77% of P4 pupils achieved First Level and 76% of P7 pupils achieved Second Level.

The proportion of S3 pupils achieving CfE Third Level or better is 90% to 91% for each organiser.

For each organiser, a higher proportion of pupils living in the least deprived areas achieved the CfE level relevant to their stage compared to pupils living in the most deprived areas (i.e. there is a deprivation ‘gap’) – for example the gap between pupils from the 20% most deprived areas and those from the 20% least deprived areas for numeracy at S3 was 13.5 percentage points.

The figures released today were produced in accordance with professional standards set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Background 

Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels contains achievement data based on all pupils in publicly funded Primary 1, Primary 4, Primary 7 and Secondary 3 classes and for all pupils based in special schools/units.

In previous years Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels statistics have been published as Experimental Statistics reflecting that they were new statistics in development. The Experimental Statistics label has been removed from the 2018/19 statistics. More information can be found in the publication.

Scotland’s Chief Statistician is also publishing school level data on Achievement of CfE Levels.

For primary schools, the published results are for P1, P4 and P7 stages. For secondary schools, the published results are based on achievement of CfE Third Level or better.  They therefore represent the proportion of S3 pupils in the school who have achieved ‘Third Level or better’.

All school level results will be presented in ten per cent bandings (i.e. under 10%, 10% – under 20% etc.). To prevent potential disclosure of information relating to individual pupils within schools, any schools in which the relevant cohort contains 20 or fewer pupils will be suppressed. 

Further information on school statistics within Scotland is available online.

Official statistics are produced in accordance with professional standards.