Education and skills - National Improvement Framework 2025: improvement plan

Outcome 4

Outcome 4 - high levels of achievement across the curriculum for all learners, with action to close the poverty-related attainment gap.

What the evidence is telling us – overall attainment and outcomes

Local authorities’ stretch aims for 2023/24 – 2025/26 demonstrate local ambition for improvement and accelerating progress in closing the poverty related attainment gap over three years across a set of core measures (a sub-set of the 13 key NIF measures of the poverty-related attainment gap, noting that for school leaver attainment the aims are set for all SCQF awards rather than national qualifications only (i.e. in line with Insight)).

Findings from HM Inspectors through school inspections tell us that, in most primary and special schools and half of secondary schools, staff have a strong understanding of the social and economic context of their school and the impact of the poverty related attainment gap. The majority of schools are good or better in achieving the best possible outcomes for all children and young people. More work needs to be done to develop more robust tracking of children and young people’s attainment over time. This would help staff to identify appropriate interventions and capture and measure children’s and young people’s emergent skills and attributes over time. There continues to be a need to improve young people’s achievements and wider skills development.

For both primary school literacy and numeracy, overall attainment in 2023/24 exceeded any previous year with 74% of P1, P4 and P7 pupils combined achieving expected CfE levels for literacy and 80.3% of pupils doing so for numeracy.

School leaver attainment at SCQF levels 5 and 6 shows that 87.9 per cent of school leavers left with one pass or more at SCQF Level 5 or better under the All SCQF measure in 2022-23; whilst 65.6 per cent of school leavers left with one pass or more at SCQF Level 6 or better under the All SCQF measure in 2022-23. Both of these represent a decrease compared to 2021/22 but are similar to pre-pandemic levels in 2018/19.

The percentage of 16-19 year olds in employment, education or training, based on the Annual Participation Measure (APM) published in August 2024, was 92.7%. This is a greater percentage than in any year in the period 2016 to 2024.

What the evidence is telling us - the poverty-related attainment gap

For literacy the gap between the proportion of primary pupils (P1, P4 and P7 combined) from the most and least deprived areas who achieved the expected level narrowed in 2023/24 compared to 2022/23 and was the narrowest on record at 20.2 percentage points. Attainment improved in both the least and most deprived areas, but by a greater amount in the most deprived areas, leading to a narrowing of the gap.

The gap between the proportion of primary pupils (P1, P4 and P7 combined) from the most and least deprived areas who achieved their expected level in numeracy widened in 2023-24 compared to 2022-23 (from 16.9 to 17.4 percentage points) due to an increase in attainment among pupils in the least deprived areas and no change in attainment for pupils in the most deprived areas.

Since 2017/18, national writing data has demonstrated a pronounced gap in attainment at First Level. In 2021/22, 30% of P4 children in Scotland did not reach their expected CfE writing outcomes. This led to the development and ongoing delivery of the Children and Young People’s improvement Collaborative (CYPIC) National Improving Programme in 2022/23. This figure has now reduced to 26.5% in 2023-24.

At SCQF Level 5 or better, the poverty-related attainment gap under the All SCQF measure was 16.6 percentage points in 2022-23. This is wider than in 2021-22 (16.2 percentage points). However, over the longer term, the poverty-related attainment gap has narrowed most years, starting from 32.1 percentage points in 2009-10 and reaching its narrowest in 2020-21 (16.1 percentage points). The gap in 2022-23 was narrower than in all years other than 2020-21 and 2021-22. At SCQF Level 6 or better, the poverty-related attainment gap under the All SCQF measure was 31.5 percentage points in 2022-13. This is narrower than in 2021-22

(32.6 percentage points). Over the longer term, the poverty-related gap has narrowed most years, starting from 45.4 percentage points in 2009-10 and reaching its narrowest in 2020-21 (31.4 percentage points). The gap in 2022-23 is narrower than in all years other than 2020-21. However, there remains more to do as the narrowed gap in 2022/23 was partly due to attainment of school leavers from the least deprived areas decreasing more than those from the most deprived.

The Participation Measure showed a poverty-related participation gap of 8.2 percentage points in 2024. This is narrower than any year in the period 2015/16 – 2023/24.

There is also a link between poverty and additional support needs. Just under half (46 per cent) of pupils from the most deprived areas have identified additional support needs compared to 27 per cent in the least deprived areas.^[9]

What the evidence is telling us - variation in progress

Within each of these measures and sets of data, there continues to be variation in outcomes for children and young people between different local authorities. There are a number of societal and socio-economic factors which influence attainment, which can impact on learning and achievement. Local authorities face different pressures and challenges, for example due to their geography, levels of deprivation, staffing levels, funding levels, and local priorities. These factors need to be considered when comparing performance.

ACEL data

For primary school literacy in 2023-24 there was a 21 percentage point difference between the local authorities with the highest and lowest percentages of pupils achieving the CfE expected levels at P1, P4 and P7 combined (ranging from 68% to 89%). For numeracy this was 18 percentage points (ranging from 74% to 92%).

For the same data there was a 17.6 percentage point difference between local authorities with the narrowest and widest attainment gaps for literacy at primary stages (ranging from 13 percentage points to 31 percentage points); and a 15 percentage point difference for numeracy (ranging from 12 percentage points to 27 percentage points).

Leavers

In 2022-23, there was a 14.8 percentage point difference between the local authorities with the highest and lowest percentages of leavers achieving one or more award at SCQF level 5 (ranging from 82% to 97%); and 33.7 percentage point difference at SCQF level 6 (ranging from 54% to 88%).

In terms of the poverty-related attainment gap, in 2022-23 there was a 32.3 percentage point difference between the narrowest and widest attainment gaps at SCQF level 5 (ranging from 3 percentage points to 36 percentage points); and a 41.8 percentage point difference at SCQF level 6 (ranging from 12 percentage points to 53 percentage points.

Annual Participation Measure

In 2024 there was a 7.7 percentage point difference between the local authorities with the highest and lowest participation rates of 16-19 year olds (ranging from 90.1% to 97.8%).

In terms of the participation gap between the most and least deprived areas, there was a 11.1 percentage point difference between the narrowest and widest participation gap (ranging from 3.2 percentage points to 14.3 percentage points).

What the evidence is telling us – ELC

Evidence shows that universally accessible and high quality ELC provides children with skills and confidence to carry into school education and is a cornerstone for closing the poverty-related attainment gap between children from the most and least deprived communities. The latest Care Inspectorate ELC data show that the quality of funded early learning and childcare services remains high overall, with 89.8% of funded providers found to be good or better in all quality key questions.

What we will do to deliver – overall attainment and outcomes

• As set out under Outcome 1, Education Scotland will work with local authorities to build capacity and improve outcomes by developing clear and robust improvement projects that utilise attainment and achievement data.
• HMIE will continue to engage with settings and schools where the quality of education needs to improve and share examples of effective practice to support improved outcomes.
• HMIE will publish a national report on approaches taken by local authorities to support school improvement.

What we will do to deliver – the poverty-related attainment gap

• Education Scotland will design and deliver bespoke ‘leadership for equity support across 32 local authorities to augment school approaches to improving attainment.
• We will maximise and sustain the impact of the £1 billion Scottish Attainment Challenge and intensify action to deal with the ongoing impacts of the pandemic on children’s progress. This will be achieved through the rigorous evaluation of the programme to-date, work with schools, Education Scotland, ADES and Scottish Government to identify and highlight the approaches and interventions that have had the greatest impact locally and nationally. This body of evidence on progress and impact – shared on Scotland’s Equity Toolkit, and through engagement across these key partners and schools – will help local authorities and schools to:
  • sustain the cultural focus on equity in education
  • draw on strong examples of impactful local practice
  • work as a networked learning system to learn from schools and authorities across the country where progress has been made and approaches to closing the poverty related attainment gap have been mainstreamed.
• We will provide £37m in 2025/26 to deliver the expansion of free school meals programme to those in receipt of Scottish Child Payment in Primaries 6 and 7. This support will help provide access to healthy and nutritious meals for around 25,000 children.
• We will deliver Wave 3 of The Children and Young People Improvement Collaborative National Improving Writing programme (2024/25) with five further local authorities. Plan and deliver Wave 4 (academic year 2025/26). The 12-week writing programme is designed to equip teachers with the skills to monitor progress in their classroom and collate data for improvement to guide their decision making. The programme works because it combines improvement science skills with an evidenced based standardised approach for teaching writing.

What we will do to deliver – ELC

• We will have a continued focus on embedding quality at the heart of the delivery of funded ELC services. To support consistently high-quality experiences for children, the Scottish Government will collaborate with all relevant agencies to ensure that there is greater alignment and strategic direction for improvement work. This will include simplifying and streamlining access to guidance for the sector and continued sponsorship of the Care Inspectorate ELC Improvement Programme in 2025-26, to provide bespoke improvement support to settings at risk of failing to meet the National Standard for funded ELC.
• We will ensure that the children who will benefit most, benefit first from high quality funded ELC, by providing targeted early access to funded ELC at age two. The eligibility criteria use proxy measures for ‘disadvantage’, modelled on criteria for access to Free School Meals. Our aim is that by providing these children with early access to high quality ELC, they are more likely to achieve similar outcomes long-term to their peers who start funded ELC at age three.
• We will work with local authorities and the Improvement Service on a National Improvement Project focusing on boosting take up of the two-year-old offer among the families most at risk of poverty, and in areas with some of the lowest take up rates.

How we will measure progress

HMIE will monitor the percentage of schools requiring a further inspection from HM Inspectors.

The Scottish Government and Education Scotland will continue to monitor local authorities’ and national attainment and participation data for the key NIF measures, and within them core stretch aims for progress by 2025/26 set by local authorities.

The Scottish Government will continue to evaluate the Attainment Scotland Fund in line with its published evaluation strategy, with key intelligence on the importance of young people’s readiness to learn, engagement with families and communities, progress across the range of NIF measures and long term impact of the programme to be evaluated. Evaluation outputs will be published throughout the 2025 and 2026.

The learning from the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) sampling work with over 120 schools across Scotland on how PEF is contributing towards improving the educational outcomes of children and young people/families impacted by poverty, will be shared with headteachers, local authorities and key stakeholders, as well as the evidence gathered by and professional expertise of Education Scotland, which will underpin this work.

Education Scotland will assess the impact of the Improving Writing Programme via:

• Monitoring the impact on attainment reported by teachers at class level, annual ACEL data at school and local authority level.
• Monitoring implementation of the Writing Bundle.
• Maintain connections with Local Leads delivering the programme to support / ensure fidelity of implementation.
• Teachers tracking pupil enjoyment.
• Interviews and qualitative feedback summarising impact from local leads, staff and children.

The work on improving take up rates for ELC reports through the ‘Best Start, Bright Futures: Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026’ progress reports.^[10]