Education and skills - National Improvement Framework 2025: improvement plan

Measuring the attainment gap: Progress towards 2025/26 local authority stretch aims

For primary school attainment, ACEL data showed strong improvement between 2020/21 and 2021/22 and the poverty-related attainment gap returned towards pre-pandemic levels. In 2022/23 and 2023/24 this improvement has continued for primary school literacy with ACEL data showing that collectively local authorities have made progress towards the stretch aims set for 2025/26. However progress across the four aggregate stretch aims varied for individual local authorities.

The 2023/24 ACEL data for primary school numeracy shows that although the percentage of primary pupils achieving expected levels in numeracy increased slightly for those in the least deprived areas, there was no change for those in the most deprived areas. Therefore, the gap has increased slightly. However progress across the four aggregate stretch aims varied for individual local authorities.

For school leavers with one or more SQA A-C awards at SCQF levels 5, the gap increased pre-pandemic, before decreasing to its narrowest in 2020/21 (18.2 percentage points) but the gap has increased again in recent years. For school leavers with one or more SQA A-C awards at SCQF levels 6, the gap has narrowed most years, reaching its narrowest in 2020/21 (34.4 percentage points) before increasing again in recent years.

For the Annual Participation Measure, Skills Development Scotland data published in August 2024 showed that progress was being made towards the aggregated aims for the poverty-related participation gap, with the gap at its narrowest since 2016/17.