Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) levels: 2022/23

Chapter 7: Achievement of CfE Levels by local authority

If making comparisons between local authorities we recommend keeping in mind the context of the authorities and their approach to assessment. See Section 10.6 for more information.

This chapter describes the range of data reported by local authorities, and comparisons to the national level results. Full details of achievement of CfE levels by local authority (2016/17 to 2022/23) can be found in the supplementary tables. The supplementary tables also include a breakdown of local authority achievement of CfE levels by deprivation.

Chart 11 illustrates the range in results between local authorities and organisers for P1, P4 and P7. The largest range in results across the four separate organisers (i.e. excluding literacy) can be seen in writing at P4 (ranging from 63 per cent to 91 per cent) – a difference of 28 percentage points. This is especially wide due to the influence of one local authority in which the proportion of pupils achieving the expected level is 10 percentage points higher than any other local authority.

The smallest range in results between local authority across the four separate organisers (i.e. excluding literacy) is for listening and talking. The range in performance (between highest and lowest) in listening and talking is 12 percentage points at P1, 16 percentage points at P4 and 15 percentage points at P7.

In both literacy and numeracy, the range of results at the primary stages between local authorities has generally decreased between 2021/22 and 2022/23. The only exception was in P4 numeracy where the range increased slightly from 25 to 26 percentage points. This follows larger decreases in the range of results between 2020/21 and 2021/22. These in turn followed generally large increases in the range between 2018/19 and 2020/21, reflecting variation in the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pupils across the country, as well as pandemic-related data quality concerns reported by some local authorities (for more information see Section 1.3 in Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels 2020-21). The ranges in 2022/23 are now mainly lower than they were in 2018/19.

At S3 (see Chart 12 below), the range in results between local authorities reporting attainment at Third Level or better was smaller than at Fourth Level. For Third Level or better, the smallest range in results by local authority across the four separate organisers was 15 percentage points for reading (82 to 97 per cent). The highest range was for numeracy at 22 percentage points (76 to 98 per cent).

For Fourth Level in S3, the smallest range in results reported by local authorities was 35 percentage points for numeracy (47 to 82 per cent) and the largest was 50 percentage points for listening & talking (36 to 86 per cent). These gaps are mainly bigger than in 2021/22 but are all smaller than in 2018/19.

Results for local authorities by SIMD quintiles are available in the supplementary tables.