Schools - Positive Leaver Destinations
The percentage of school leavers going to a 'positive destination' on leaving school
Data
Schools - Positive Leaver Destinations
Description
This dataset contains the percentage of school leavers going to a 'positive destination' on leaving school. Positive destinations include: higher education, further education, training, voluntary work, employment, activity agreements. More information on school leaver destinations is available here.
Data is for senior phase (S4-S6) leavers from publicly funded secondary and grant aided secondary schools. This includes a small number of pupils who are on the roll of the school but attend full-time courses or further education outside of the school.
Data is not provided for Junior High Schools as these schools generally only take pupils as far as S4, after which they transfer to another centre to continue their education.
The positive leaver destination measure on Parentzone Scotland uses data from Insight about school leavers, which is collected by Skills Development Scotland. Details about a leaver's destination are only included in the measure if a link can be made between the leaver's Skills Development Scotland destination record and a Pupil Census record with stage S4, S5 or S6 for the same academic year. In addition, the young person must not have a Pupil Census record in the following academic year in a senior phase stage (S4-S6).
For some data points, a special character is provided instead of a number. These have the meaning:
* 'NA' - data not available
* '' - the value has been hidden for disclosure reasons
'#' - data not available because the school is a junior high school with no year S5 or S6
Metadata
| Theme | Education, Skills and Training |
|---|---|
| Organisation | Scottish Government |
| License | UK Open Government Licence (OGL) |
| Published | |
| Last updated | |
| Next update | 1 Apr 2027 |
| Update frequency | annual |
| Reference period | 2015 to 2025 |
| Contact | Insight@gov.scot |
Data quality
Completeness
A comprehensive glossary of terms associated with education can be found on the Parentzone Scotland website
Uniqueness
Not assessed
Consistency
Using data for individual schools as league tables implies that the schools at the top of the table are the best in Scotland and those at the bottom, the worst. This is misleading because schools often operate in very different circumstances, such as different numbers of children with additional support needs, or different job opportunites for school leavers depending on location. The context of a school should be taken into account when considering how well a school is doing.
The best way to judge the performance of a school when using this dataset is to compare a school to its 'virtual comparator'. The 'virtu\u200Bal comparator' is a sample group of pupils from other parts of Scotland who have the same characteristics as the young people in the corresponding school. This is fairer than comparing one school directly with another.
Timeliness
Not assessed
Validity
Not assessed
Accuracy
Not assessed
Quality management
Not assessed
Additional details
Revisions
Not assessed
Confidentiality policy
The presentation of school level data here ensures that individual children cannot be identified. Where data is missing from tables in this dataset, it has been omitted to preserve the confidentiality of individuals.