School leaver follow-up destinations

Scotland’s Chief Statistician today published ‘Summary statistics for follow-up leaver destinations, no. 5: 2023 edition’.

 The proportion of school leavers in a positive destination nine months after the end of the school year was at its highest level since comparable data was first gathered in 2009/10.

Among 2021/22 leavers, 93.5% were in a positive follow-up destination (including higher education, further education, employment, training, personal skills development and voluntary work), up from 93.2% of 2020/21 leavers.

Of 2021/22 leavers, 31.8 % were in employment, the highest proportion since comparable data was first gathered in 2009/10.

Higher education remains the most popular destination although this saw a drop from 40.3% for 2020/21 leavers to 37.7% for 2021/22 leavers.

While the proportion of leavers in further education increased from 18.3% for 2020/21 leavers to 20.7% for 2021/22 leavers, this is the second lowest proportion since 2009/10.

S6 leavers in 2021/22 were the most likely to be in a positive follow-up destination (96.0%) and S4 leavers were the least likely (86.9%). For S5 leavers the figure was 90.9%.

Of the 2021/22 leavers who entered a positive initial destination (three months after the end of the school year) 95.7% were also in a positive follow-up destination (nine months after the end of the school year).

The gap between the proportion of leavers from our most and least deprived communities in positive follow-up destinations is now the narrowest since 2009/10, at 7.0 percentage points.

Background

Follow-up destinations relate to outcomes approximately nine months after the end of the school year and the figures for the 2021/22 school leaver cohort relate to statuses recorded as at April 2023. The effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will have affected the destination choices made by, and opportunities available to, some school leavers in 2019/20, 2020/21 and 2021/22, through direct effects on the availability of certain destinations, its possible influence on some pupils’ decisions on when to leave school, and the impact of changes to certification of National (and other) qualifications in 2020, 2021 and 2022 on leavers’ attainment. These effects should be kept in mind when considering changes in leaver destinations over time.

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 follow-up leaver destinations, no. 5: 2023 edition’. The publication uses the school leaver destination data supplied by Skills Development Scotland (SDS) from the “Opportunities for All” shared dataset.