School leaver follow-up destinations

Scotland’s Chief Statistician today published ‘Summary Statistics for Follow-up Leaver Destinations, No. 2: 2020 Edition’.

The results show that 92.9% of 2018-19 school leavers were in a positive destination nine months after leaving school; this has decreased from 93.3% in 2017-18.  

Compared to the previous school leaver cohort (2017-18) there was a decrease in the proportion of leavers in Higher Education, from 39.0% to 38.4% and an increase in the proportion of leavers in Further Education, from 22.6% to 23.3%. 

The proportion in employment was 28.0% for 2018-19 school leavers which has fallen slightly from 28.3% in 2017-18.

Follow-up destinations relate to outcomes approximately nine months after the end of the school year. The figures for 2018-19 in this report relate to early April 2020 and therefore will not reflect the full impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The figures released today were produced by professionally independent statistical staff in accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.

These statistics are sourced from ‘Summary Statistics for Follow-up Leaver Destinations, No. 2: 2020 Edition’.  The publication uses the school leaver destination data supplied by Skills Development Scotland (SDS) from the “Opportunities for All shared dataset.”