School leaver follow-up destinations

Statistics have been released today on the destinations of 2023-24 school leavers from Scotland’s publicly funded schools nine months after the end of the school year.

Among 2023-24 school leavers, 93.1% were in a positive follow-up destination (including Higher Education, Further Education, Employment, Training, Personal Skills Development and Voluntary Work). This is up from 92.8% in 2022-23. Over the longer term it has increased from 85.9% in 2009-10.

The increase over the last year has been caused by increases in the proportions of school leavers in Higher Education and Further Education.

• Higher Education remains the most common destination increasing from 37.1% in 2022-23 to 38.1% for 2023-24 school leavers.
• The proportion in Employment decreased from 31.2% in 2022-23 to 28.8% in 2023-24 but remains higher than at any point prior to 2020-21.
• Meanwhile, the proportion in Further Education increased from 21.2% in 2022-23 to 21.9% in 2023-24 but remains lower than at any point prior to 2020-21.

The gap between the proportion of school leavers from our most and least deprived communities in positive follow-up destinations increased from 7.5 percentage points in 2022-23 to 8.3 percentage points in 2023-24. Although the gap has widened since 2022-23, it remains narrower than all years prior to 2019-20.

In 2023-24, as in other years, S6 leavers were the most likely to be in a positive follow-up destination (96.5%) and S4 leavers were the least likely (85.8%). For S5 leavers the figure was 90.0%.

The publication refers to the same cohort of school leavers whose destinations three months after the end of the school year were published in February's initial destination statistics. The proportion of leavers in a positive follow-up destination is typically one to two percentage points lower than the proportion in a positive initial destination. For 2023-24 leavers there has been a drop of 2.6 percentage points from 95.7% to 93.1%.

Of the 2023-24 school leavers who entered a positive initial destination 95.5% sustained a positive follow-up destination. This varied by destination. For example, 94.2% of school leavers who were in Employment three months after the end of the school year were also in Employment nine months after the end of the school year. Whilst for Further Education the equivalent figure was 78.0% and for Training it was 44.8%.

Background

Follow-up destinations relate to outcomes approximately nine months after the end of the school year and the figures for the 2023-24 school leaver cohort relate to statuses recorded as at April 2025.

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

These statistics are sourced from ‘Summary statistics for follow-up leaver destinations, no. 7: 2025 edition’. The publication uses the school leaver destination data supplied by Skills Development Scotland (SDS) from the “Opportunities for All” shared dataset. The initial leaver destination statistics for this cohort were published in February.