School leaver attainment and destinations

Scotland’s Chief Statistician today published statistics on the initial destinations and attainment of 2018-19 school leavers.

The proportion of 2018-19 school leavers with one pass or more in National Qualifications has reduced at Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) Level 4 or better, Level 5 or better, Level 6 or better and Level 7:

• 95.9% of school leavers gained one pass or more at SCQF Level 4 (e.g. National 4) or better, (a decrease from 96.2% in 2017-18);
• the proportion of school leavers attaining one pass or more at SCQF Level 5 (e.g. National 5) or better decreased from 85.9% in 2017-18 to 85.1% in 2018-19
• the proportion of school leavers attaining one pass or more at SCQF Level 6 (e.g. Higher) or better decreased from 62.2% in 2017-18 to 60.5% in 2018-19.
• the proportion of school leavers attaining one pass or more at SCQF Level 7 (e.g. Advanced Higher) or better decreased from 20.2% in 2017-18 to 19.1% in 2018-19.

The results also show that 95.0% of 2018-19 school leavers were in a positive destination three months after leaving school, the highest rate since 2009-10. Positive destinations include higher education, further education, employment, training, personal skills development and voluntary work.

Compared to the previous year (2017-18) there was a decrease in the proportion of leavers in Higher Education, from 41.1% to 40.3%, and an increase in the proportion in Further Education from 26.5% to 27.3%. The proportion of school leavers who were unemployed fell from 5.0% in 2017-18 to 4.5% in 2018-19.

Background

The figures released today were produced by professionally independent statistical staff in accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.

These statistics are sourced from ‘Summary Statistics for Attainment and Initial Leaver Destinations, No. 2: 2020 Edition’. The publication uses the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) post-review results and school leaver destination data supplied by Skills Development Scotland (SDS) from the Opportunities for All shared dataset. 

The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) is Scotland’s national qualifications framework. The SCQF has 12 levels, which, in ascending order (SCQF Level 1-12), indicate the level of difficulty of a particular qualification. The SCQF allows for broad comparisons to be made between qualifications to allows learners, employers and the public to understand the range of skills and learning that should be achieved at each level. More information can be found at https://scqf.org.uk/.