Attainment Scotland Fund (ASF) Evaluation Summative report, 2026

Achievement

To what extent did the fund contribute to an education system which encourages, reflects and values the breadth of achievements that contribute to improved outcomes for children and young people?

One focus of the 2022 SAC mission was to provide wider opportunities to learn beyond the classroom, skills for learning life and work, and wider achievements. The interim report introduced this in more detail. This section summarises the research evidence that has been gathered since then, evidencing the provision of wider initiatives as well as their impacts.

Opportunities to learn beyond the classroom and wider achievements

To what extent has the ASF given learners more opportunities to learn in other areas of life beyond the classroom? What was the impact?

To what extent has the ASF provided opportunities for learners to experience and benefit from wider achievements such as voluntary work, participation in sport, the arts or other activities in the school or local community?

Provision

The most common extra-curricular activities that staff reported in the 2025 School Survey were residential trips/holiday activities (49%), outdoor learning (32%), after school clubs (21%) and sporting events (18%). The main impacts described included allowing all children to take part (37%), provided life skills (31%), improvements to mental health and wellbeing (16%) and positively impacting on attendance (15%) and transitions (15%).

The 2025 School Survey asked which approaches, if any, had been taken to provide wider opportunities specifically to address the needs of children and young people who have experienced care. Wellbeing initiatives were most commonly reported (65%), followed by wider achievements/qualifications (42%), attendance initiatives (41%) and/or outdoor learning (39%), while 24% mentioned mentoring and 22% mentioned engagement/support from a Virtual School Head Teacher. Secondary schools were more likely than Primaries to mention any of the approaches to supporting the specific needs of children and young people who have experienced care, while those from primaries were more likely to say ‘none of the above’ (12% v nobody from a secondary).

Staff working in schools in deprived areas reported use of more initiatives to support wider achievement. The biggest differences were seen in relation to use of a Virtual Headteacher (36% v 16%), attendance initiatives (50% v 30%) and wellbeing initiatives (77% v 58%). A similar pattern was seen in the analysis by urban/rural classification, reflecting the differing profiles of schools in these areas – e.g. 17% of those from small town/rural schools said they had used none of the listed approaches, compared to 4% from large urban and 5% from other urban areas.

There was strong evidence across the case study research that the ASF has provided pupils with access to wider opportunities, with a variety of examples given. This included access to educational trips, residentials, cultural experiences such as visits to the theatre, trips to the theatre or the pantomime at Christmas, whole-school days out to the beach, access to outdoor learning and programmes such as Columba 1400 (a leadership skills course including a one-week residential course on Skye), the Duke of Edinburgh award, and other clubs and team building activities. Some secondary schools highlighted that the ASF had allowed them to expand the curriculum to include new qualifications such as barista training, beekeeping, volunteering, leadership/coaching etc.

Specific activities and programmes were mentioned in the case study research, including Columba 1400, Metro Outdoors team building activities, Towards Better Futures courses (vocational/employability focused learning), the John Muir and Duke of Edinburgh awards, and various after school clubs. These clubs sometimes focused on a specific activity, but were also noted to offer additional benefits, including building positive relationships and developing pupils’ engagement with school through these positive wider experiences:

“There is a marked difference between attainment for children with less well off backgrounds. There’s also, like, differences in experiences, lived experiences that the children have. So, we try to increase that… We organise trips for the children, and we try as best we can to reduce, or have no costs for parents, because the cost of the school day is a big focus for us… we try to improve the experiences and chances that the children have.”

“That’s very much targeting your pupils in poverty who maybe don’t get those opportunities outside school, and it’s part of the football experience that they’re having, but… there’s food being brought in… They play football, so that’s the main focus, but there’s a lot of building relationships and ensuring pupil wellbeing, like, it just gives them a really good experience.”

PEF funding was used to give pupils access to trips that they would have not otherwise been able to afford, and also for equipment so that pupils could participate fully, e.g. providing walking boots and waterproofs for a residential as well as actually funding the trip. For several schools, these activities were only part-funded by PEF and other fundraising had to be done (e.g. PEF was used to buy event tickets, while parent council fundraising was used to provide transport). However, in some instances the entire activity was funded via the ASF, either for targeted pupils or for all participants.

“We think very carefully about the experiences that are curriculum experiences that we offer our children and then we think, what are the things that our families could struggle with, and it is mostly cultural. I think if you're thinking about, you know, budgeting, it’s those cultural things are the first that you can't do. So we look very carefully to make sure that the children have those experiences that they maybe don't have at home.”

Where funding for these activities was more targeted (i.e. PEF funding was available to subsidise or pay the full cost for an activity for specific pupils) respondents often emphasised their efforts to administer this discreetly to avoid any stigma or embarrassment for families that needed extra help – e.g. pupils living in the most deprived areas were identified as being eligible for help and received different letters:

“When a trip goes out, or is advertised, I'll look at the names that are on the trip, and try and find out who's in that bottom decile, who would maybe not get the opportunity to go, and look if there's some funding there that we could help support them to be able to allow them to go on the trip.”

Two of the secondary case study schools had PEF-funded Principal Teacher roles with specific remits for wider achievement, ensuring there was a school-wide focus on this – and both of these schools had introduced wider elements to their curriculum using ASF funding. One had used PEF for equipment to deliver qualifications in barista skills and beekeeping. The other had introduced a wider achievement programme for their S5 and S6 pupils:

"One of the decisions we made about actually looking at the range of qualifications which young people get, and thinking a little bit more… creatively, about what the young people can engage in… All our fifth and sixth years engage in a wider achievement programme… This year we are looking at delivering level five volunteering, level five wellbeing award, level five leadership through Mentors Against Violence Prevention. We’re looking at a level five coaching award, Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award…”

Around a quarter of school staff (24%) reported that they had participated in professional learning in relation to wider achievement initiatives, with senior/middle leaders (35%) and support staff (28%) more likely to report this. Secondary school staff (35% of respondents) were more likely to report wider achievement professional learning.

Impacts

There was strong endorsement that SAC has given learners more opportunities to learn in other areas of life beyond the classroom. Around three-quarters of school staff agreed that ASF provided opportunities for children and young people to both learn outside the classroom; and develop important skills for life, learning and work (74% and 75% respectively). Agreement was slightly lower that the ASF has provided opportunities for wider experience and achievements such as voluntary work, sport, the arts and other activities, although a majority still agreed (66%). A similar percentage (45%) of headteachers or those with a lead role said that their school had used ASF funding for a ‘wider achievement focus/initiative/offer’. School level responses were lower than SAC Leads who almost all agreed that schools had used ASF for wider achievement (96% in 2025, which increased from 89% in 2023/24). This difference in understanding between the strategic and school level could suggest there are barriers to delivering wider opportunities at the school level.

Secondary schools in the 2025 Schools Survey were more likely than Primaries to agree in relation to offering wider achievements such as voluntary work, arts and sports etc (72% v 63%). Secondary school leaders (62%) were more likely than those in primary schools (41%) to report a wider achievement focus in their school. There was less agreement overall among respondents based in small town/rural schools (69% agreed v 76% in large urban and 77% in other urban areas). Schools in the most deprived areas were more likely to report a wider achievement focus (64% least deprived, v 78% second least deprived, 79% second most deprived and 83% most deprived). It is not clear whether these findings reflect lower access to wider opportunities in these areas, and/or the lower levels of ASF funding likely to be available to these schools due to how the funding is allocated.

The main impacts described in the 2025 Schools survey included:

• equity in participation (37%)
• providing life skills/experience (31%)
• improvements to mental health/wellbeing/self-esteem (16%)
• improved attendance/engagement (15%)
• confidence for transitions (15%)

School staff and case study schools highlighted many of the benefits above, and also flagged the key role in development of ‘soft skills’ (leadership, teamwork, resilience communication etc.) and achieving qualifications and positive destinations.

The 2025/26 national stakeholder interviews also identified benefits from wider experiences to readiness to learn. For example:

“There are definitely benefits to readiness to learn from ASF interventions- such as homework clubs, extra support and the creation of safe spaces.”

Pupils provided the most rich and detailed insights into the impact this had on them in terms of confidence, leadership and soft skills:

“For the [study weekend including outdoor activities] you had to do climbing up high, so it takes a lot of confidence… It also helps you in an exam… you need to be confident, if you’re all nervous and all of that your brain isn’t going to work well… That really helped me this year.”

“Apart from, like, participating more in class, it’s taught me to persevere through more things. Like, if work gets hard, you just have to get through it, no matter what”.

“I think [Columba 1400 has] given me the confidence to do stuff around school more, like, volunteer for doing awards nights and the dementia when people from the care homes came up. I helped with that. I also think it did help me talk to people better, ’cause I would never talk first before Columba. I would be really nervous. But now I just talk.”

“It was, like, a leadership project thing, teaching us how to be our own leaders, how to be more confident in… public speaking, communication, a lot of stuff like that. And helping us realise what our values and skills were.”

“I think some of the stuff that… I learned at Columba I use on, like, a daily basis now… Like, teamwork. I never really used to talk to people in groups, I usually just do it myself, but now I actually try and cooperate with people a bit better.”

Skills for learning, life and work

To what extent has the ASF provided opportunities for learners to develop important skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work (SVQs, NPAs, Modern/Foundation Apprenticeships)?

The basket of stretch aims were updated to include the ‘All SCQF’ measure which is school leaver attainment in any qualification or learning programme on the SCQF as reported on Insight (the professional benchmarking tool used by local authorities and schools). All SCQF includes the SQA National Qualifications, other SQA qualifications, and qualifications from other providers, universities, colleges, and work-based learning.

There remains a gap between pupils from the most and least deprived areas who achieve 1 or more passes at SCQF Levels 4, 5, 6 or above. However, considering pupils from the most deprived areas only, the proportion of pupils achieving five or more passes has increased from 41.3% to 53.0% at Level 5 and from 16.2% to 24.3% at Level 6, between 2015/16 and 2024/25.

It should be borne in mind that the number of award providers and types of awards has expanded in this period. However, the important aspect of this trend is that pupils are achieving these awards.