Summary Statistics for Attainment and Initial Leaver Destinations, No. 7: 2025 edition

Access to Data and Further Information

Where you can access the data

More information on school leavers’ initial destinations and attainment are available in the supplementary tables. These include breakdowns of the data by: characteristics of leavers; local authority; reasons for Additional Support Need; stage of leaving; and subject. Some tables also include information on the initial destinations and attainment of leavers from special schools.

Data on school leaver attainment and destinations is also available via the Scottish Government’s open data platform.

Further sources of information on school pupils’ attainment, and school leaver destinations

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

School level information is available through Insight (a professional benchmarking tool used by local authorities and schools) and will be published on the School Information Dashboard.

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.

The Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland (SDS) have developed 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. Latest results were published in August.

Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) Levels is a census based data collection and gathers data on whether or not pupils have achieved the expected CfE Level for their stage based on the class teachers’ professional judgement. The collection covers numeracy and the three elements of literacy (reading, writing, listening and talking) at four stages within Broad General Education: P1, P4, P7 and S3.

Scotland participates in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) triennial Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey. This assessment is undertaken by 15 year-olds in almost eighty countries, including all OECD countries, and as such is a key international benchmark of performance. Results are available on the Scottish Government website.

Skills Development Scotland publish Foundation Apprenticeship Progress Reports. These include data on the number of young people undertaking Foundation Apprenticeships in Scotland.

The list below provides summary information for some of the key sources of data on attainment and the activity of young people in Scotland.

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.
4. Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels.
   • Available from the Scottish Government, December.
   • Provides information on the performance of P1, P4, P7 and S3 school pupils. Reports on the percentage of pupils who have achieved the expected Curriculum for Excellence level in reading, writing, listening and talking, and numeracy.
   • Coverage: all P1, P4, P7 and S3 pupils in publicly funded schools. (Not collected in 2019/20. Collected for primary school pupils only in 2020/21).
5. SQA Attainment Statistics.
   • Available from Scottish Qualifications Authority, August and December.
   • Attainment statistics for every course and qualification in a given year.
   • Coverage: all SQA attainment, not just that of school leavers; and includes those attaining SQA qualifications in non-school settings such as Further Education.