Attainment Scotland Fund Evaluation: Interim Report, 2025

Introduction and Context

Scottish Attainment Challenge

The Scottish Attainment Challenge was launched in February 2015 with the strategic aim of ‘closing the poverty-related attainment gap between children and young people from the least and most disadvantaged communities’.

In 2022, the Scottish Attainment Challenge was refreshed, with the launch of its new Mission:

‘To use education to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty with a focus on tackling the poverty-related attainment gap to deliver on the Scottish Government’s vision of equity and excellence in education’.

Attainment Scotland Fund (ASF)

The Attainment Scotland Fund (ASF), which supports the Scottish Attainment Challenge, prioritises improvements in literacy, numeracy, and health and wellbeing of those children and young people adversely affected by poverty in Scotland’s schools. Achieving excellence and equity in education are the key aims. The ASF accounts for approximately 3% of school education spending in Scotland and is designed to leverage wider change within the system towards the strategic mission.

The ASF is made up of various funding streams totalling £1 billion. Attainment Scotland Funding currently includes:

• Strategic Equity Funding (SEF): introduced in 2022, a strategic level of funding across each of the 32 local authorities to plan and undertake strategic activity in connection with the Scottish Attainment Challenge Mission. This replaces Challenge Authority Funding under the previous roll-out of Attainment Scotland Funding prior to 2022, which nine local authorities received selected on the basis of high levels of deprivation.
• Pupil Equity Funding (PEF): introduced in 2017, provides funding direct to schools allocated on the basis of free school meal (FSM) registration for pupils P1 to S3^[1], with over 97% of schools in Scotland in receipt of PEF. Whilst funding is allocated to schools on a per pupil basis, headteachers use their professional judgement to decide how to direct this spend within their school.
• Care Experienced Children and Young People (CECYP) Funding: introduced in 2018/19, provides funding to all local authorities based on the number of care experienced children and young people from birth to the age of 26 in the local authority. This includes all children and young people who have at any stage in their life, no matter how short a time, had any care experience. The fund aims to improve the educational outcomes and experiences for care experienced children and young people, supported by the strategic goals of The Promise and the Scottish Attainment Challenge.
• The ASF also supports a suite of national programmes, including investment in Education Scotland Attainment Advisor support for all 32 local authorities, in third sector partnerships, workforce development and the evaluation of the programme itself.

The Scottish Attainment Challenge Framework for Recovery and Accelerating Progress published in March 2022 sets out the framework underpinning the Scottish Attainment Challenge and the Attainment Scotland Fund. This is supported by national operational guidance published annually on each of the three funding strands which together make up the Attainment Scotland Fund. The three organisers underpinning the Scottish Attainment Challenge – Learning and Teaching, Leadership and Families and Communities – have remained in place since the inception of the SAC in 2016.

A key element of the SAC Framework for Recovery and Accelerating Progress is a requirement for local authorities to set ambitious, and achievable stretch aims for progress in overall attainment and towards closing the poverty-related attainment gap across a sub-set of the NIF measures of the poverty-related attainment gap. Local authorities initially submitted stretch aims for the 2022/23 year. For 2023/24 – 2025/26, local authorities were required to set multi-year stretch aims for the three-year period. Stretch aims are published^[2] with individual local aims and an aggregation of those aims to provide a national picture.

The ASF Evaluation

We have been evaluating the Attainment Scotland Fund (ASF) since the inception of the Scottish Attainment Challenge. The evaluation aims to provide learning about the overall implementation of the ASF and to assess progress towards its long-term outcomes.

Prior to the Scottish Attainment Challenge refresh, the evaluation reported on an annual, retrospective basis, with an initial report on Year 1 and 2 (2015 to 2017) published in 2017, and annual evaluation reports published from 2018 to 2022. In March 2021, Scottish Government and Education Scotland published the Closing the poverty-related attainment gap: progress report 2016 to 2021 five year impact report. The most recent annual report was published in June 2022.

The current phase of ASF Evaluation aims to provide learning about the overall implementation of the refreshed ASF since 2022 and the extent to which progress has been made towards meeting intended outcomes articulated in the Scottish Attainment Challenge Logic Model in support of the refreshed programme mission.

The Logic Model was developed in 2022 as part of the programme refresh through a collaborative approach which identified activities and short-, medium- and long-term outcomes. It is presented as a ‘nested’ model, setting out activities at school, local authority, regional and national levels.

The Evaluation Strategy for the Attainment Scotland Fund 2022-26 sets out the broad terms of the Scottish Government’s approach to evaluating the ASF during this parliamentary term, with four key strands of evaluation focus across the multi-year evaluation:

• Process evaluation to consider implementation of the refreshed Attainment Scotland Fund, including Strategic Equity Funding, Pupil Equity Funding and Care Experienced Children and Young People Funding;
• A thematic strand of evaluation to respond to emerging system priorities and to consider ‘what works, for whom and in what circumstances’.
• Reporting on the National Improvement Framework (NIF) measures of the poverty-related attainment gap.
• Evaluation of the impact of ASF, through a combination of qualitative and quantitative research and analysis.

We have published annual analytical plans^[3] as companion documents to the Evaluation Strategy, outlining in more detail the evaluation activity planned in support of the Evaluation Strategy.

About this report

This report presents analysis of the quantitative data over the years of the Fund along with other evaluation evidence, including findings from a survey of Scottish Attainment Challenge local authority leads and a school-based staff survey, to provide a broad understanding of the progress being made. This includes consideration of ASF supported approaches at the school, local, regional and national level to support children and young people affected by poverty.

The report brings together our learning structured across the four evaluation strands of activity set out in the Evaluation Strategy noted above. The main evidence sources used in this report include:

• Surveys of local authority Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC) Leads^[4] in 2023 and 2024.^[5] Nineteen of the thirty two local authorities responded to the 2023 survey. This increased to twenty six local authority responses to the 2024 survey.
• An online school-based staff survey (the School Survey) undertaken in 2025. The School Survey 2025 was undertaken between March and May 2025 with headteachers, senior/middle leaders, classroom teachers and other school staff. In total 974 responses were received from 598 schools, an overall response rate of 25%;^[6]
• Reporting on National Improvement Framework Attainment and Health and Wellbeing Measures in 2023-25;^[7]
• Online interviews with national education stakeholders in 2024;^[8]
• Thematic evaluation reports in 2024.^[9]

Annex B further details the evidence sources we have utilised to compile this report.

Next steps for the evaluation

The summative evaluation report will be published in March 2026. Progress towards the long-term outcomes as defined in the Scottish Attainment Challenge Logic Model will be the focus of the summative report.

It will draw on the findings of the interim report and a wider range of evidence sources to provide summative reporting related to the ASF Evaluation Strategy 2022-26.