National Improvement Framework - enhanced data collection: consultation analysis

Next Steps

Key measures

As respondents were mainly supportive around promoting attendance from a sub-measure to a key measure, and given the importance of attendance for attainment, the Scottish Government will include attendance as a new key measure for 2023, and this has been reflected in the 2023 National Improvement Framework and Improvement Plan. Given the particular concerns raised in this consultation around the implications for including exclusions as a key measure, we intend to leave it as a sub-measure.

Positive destinations

Given the majority of respondents felt that positive destinations should be included as a key measure alongside the participation measure, in addition to attendance, this has also been added to the list of key measures for 2023. There are two measures of positive destinations – initial and follow up:

Initial destinations

• 3 months after leaving school
• Published February each year Summary Statistics for Attainment and Initial Leaver Destinations, No. 4: 2022 Edition - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
• Shows destination closer to point at which young person left school
• Closer link between school accountability and school leaver destination

Follow up destinations

• 9 months after leaving school
• Published June each year Summary Statistics for Follow-up Leaver Destinations, No. 4: 2022 Edition - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
• Better reflection of a sustained destination

The Scottish Government decided to opt for the 3 months after leaving school option, as this provides a closer link between school accountability and school leaver destination. We recognise that this provides only a snapshot of the activity being undertaken by school leavers on a given day, that is why it will sit alongside the participation measure, which reports on the wider activity of the 16-19 cohort, including those still at school, in order to provide a more rounded indication of sustained activity.

Health and wellbeing

Given the support for including measures to reflect health and wellbeing, we propose setting out an intention to include the data on confidence, resilience and wellbeing in the National Improvement Framework and Improvement Plan in future years. Further developments around this work will be progressed collaboratively between the Scottish Government and key education partners.

Wider data

There are a number of strands of work that relate to data currently taking place across the system, and the Scottish Government is considering how best to align and track the activity and next steps in taking forward:

• The findings from this consultation
• The outcome of Professor Hayward's independent review of the future of qualifications and assessment
• Next steps following the National Discussion
• The responsibilities of the new agencies being set up through the Education Reform Programme
• Addressing variation and performance across the system in collaboration with Education Scotland, COSLA and ADES
• Local stretch aims and inclusion of wider achievement
• The enhancement of Insight in keeping with the recommendation in the Muir Report
• The enhanced use of data in the Broad General Education

Development of a "single source of truth" on school leaver attainment

One clear suggestion from this consultation is that there should be a single data set used for improvement purposes going forward. Concerns were raised about the fact that schools and local authorities tend to use Insight for improvement and benchmarking purposes, whereas progress against the key measures in the NIF uses data from the National Statistics publication Scottish Statistics on Attainment and Initial Leaver Destinations (SSAILD).

The differences between Insight and SSAILD reflect the different ways in which they have been developed to satisfy their different purposes. SSAILD provides National Statistics on school leaver attainment in Scotland (using solely SQA National Qualifications data) whereas Insight has been designed as a senior phase benchmarking tool so includes attainment achieved through a range of qualifications and wider award providers reflecting the wider context of the school.

Scottish Government statisticians are considering the feasibility of aligning the National Statistics SSAILD report and the Insight tool, including the addition of a wider range of providers and courses to SSAILD (on top of National Qualifications). This will require a programme of comprehensive user engagement and development work, as well as technical aspects which will need worked through to ensure the methodology is sufficiently robust for a National Statistics publication. A decision has been made that we will wait on the work on aligning the National Statistics with Insight is complete, and then add it as a new measure of attainment which should be ready in time for the 2024 National Improvement Framework and Improvement Plan, due to be published in December 2023.

Addressing variation and performance across the system in collaboration with Education Scotland, COSLA and ADES

Since the Audit Scotland report was published, the Scottish Government has been working with Education Scotland, COSLA and ADES to develop a joint approach to improving educational outcomes and experiences for children and young people. As part of a collaborative response, our organisations have been working in partnership with schools and local authorities, to gain a better understanding of the different approaches to educational improvement in each local authority, and the impact these can have on the outcomes young people achieve.

These discussions have clearly demonstrated the importance of taking full account of the context of individual schools and local authorities when making comparisons between them.