School Leaver Follow-up Destinations - Data Sources and Methodology

Further information

This publication is available on the Scottish Government's website.

Information on positive initial destinations of senior phase school leavers (plus other school level information) is also available through Insight (a professional benchmarking tool used by local authorities and schools) and published on the School Information Dashboard. However these sources do not include follow-up destination statistics.

The scope of these destination statistics is limited to school leavers, but other sources are available to assess patterns across wider society. For example, information on employment trends more broadly is available from the Scottish Government labour market statistics website, and the Scottish Funding Council publishes data on participation in Higher Education.

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) produce the Annual Participation Measure (APM) which complements school leaver destination statistics. Published every August, the APM captures the activity of all 16-19 year olds across a complete year, including those who choose to stay on at school as well as those who have left school. The APM has been adopted as the metric for measuring success in relation to the young people’s participation national indicator within the National Performance Framework. The indicator measures the percentage of young adults (16-19 year olds) participating in education, training or employment.

Summary of other relevant available information

1. Summary Statistics for Attainment and Initial Leaver Destinations (this publication).

• Available from the Scottish Government, February.
• Provides information on the attainment of school leavers and on the activities being undertaken by school leavers 3 months after the end of the school year.
• Coverage: school leavers from publicly funded schools.

2. Summary Statistics for Follow-up Leaver Destinations.

• Available from the Scottish Government, June.
• Provides information on the activities being undertaken by school leavers 9 months after the end of the school year.
• Coverage: school leavers from publicly funded schools.

3. Annual Participation Measure.

• Available from Skills Development Scotland, August.
• Reports on the economic and employment activity of the wider 16-19 year-old cohort, including those at school.
• Coverage: all 16-19 year-olds.