Education Outcomes for Looked After Children 2023/24

School attendance

Information on attendance covers all publicly funded local authority schools in Scotland and Jordanhill, the grant-aided mainstream school. It does not cover grant-aided special schools or independent schools. An extract of pupils’ attendance records for the whole school year is usually obtained from schools’ management information systems. This section compares attendance for 9,947 pupils who were looked after within the last year with all pupils.

Headline findings

• The attendance rate for pupils across primary, secondary and special schools who were looked after during the last year decreased from 84.4% in 2022/23 to 83.7% in 2023/24. This is not in line with the attendance trend seen for all pupils, which increased slightly from 90.2% in 2022/23 to 90.3% in 2023/24.
• The attendance rates for pupils looked after in foster care placements (93.5% for foster carers provided by the local authority; 94.3% for foster carers purchased by the local authority) were higher than the attendance rate for all pupils (90.3%). Pupils that were looked after at home with parents during 2023/24 had the lowest attendance rates (70.4%).
• The gap in attendance rates between looked after pupils (78.4%) and all pupils (87.6%) in secondary schools widened to 9.3 percentage points in 2023/24 (from 8.0 percentage points in 2022/23). For primary pupils, the gap increased from 3.1 percentage points to 3.3 percentage points over the same period.
• The attendance rate for looked after children during 2023/24 varied depending on the number of placements the pupil had. Pupils with four placements during the year had the lowest attendance rates (79.9%). The attendance rates were higher for those with one (83.9%), two (83.0%) or five (85.7%) placements during the year.

Attendance rates

During 2023/24, the attendance rate for looked after children fell by 0.7 percentage points to 83.7% (down from 84.4% in 2022/24). For all pupils, during 2023/24, the attendance rate increased by 0.1 percentage points to 90.3% (Chart 1).

The gap in attendance rate between looked after pupils and all pupils has seen an overall decrease since 2009/10 (when it was 7.9 percentage points) but has increased slightly over the last three years, from 4.1 percentage points in 2020/21 to 5.8 percentage points in 2022/23 and 6.6 percentage points in 2023/24.

Chart 1: Attendance of looked after pupils and all pupils

Percentage attendance of looked after pupils and all pupils, 2009/10 to 2023/24.

School Stage

In 2023/24, for primary pupils looked after during the year, attendance was 89.2%, and for secondary pupils looked after during the year, attendance was 78.4% (compared to 92.5% and 87.6% for all pupils respectively). Within special schools during 2023/24, children looked after during the year (89.2%) had slightly higher rates for attendance than all pupils (87.3%).

Table 1.1: Percentage attendance by stage, sector and sex

Percentage attendance of all pupils and looked after children by stage, sector and sex, 2009/10 to 2023/24[Note 1],[Note 2],[Note 3]

 [Note 1] Due to the effects of rounding some totals will not equal the sum of their parts.

[Note 2] The figures reported for 2020/21 refer to attendance during the periods in which schools were open to all pupils.

[Note 3] All pupils data taken from School attendance and absence statistics – gov.scot.

Placement type and sex

Looked after children can be placed in two broad types of accommodation – community settings or residential accommodation. Table 1.2 shows the attendance rates for pupils looked after within the year by their placement type and sex for children who had one placement, and by sex for children who had more than one placement. Generally, attendance rates were higher for children in community accommodation, but this varies by accommodation type. The attendance rates for children looked after at home with parents were the lowest for all accomodation types during 2023/24 (70.4%). This compares to pupils placed with foster carers purchased by the local authority and foster carers provided by the local authority where the attendance rates were highest for looked after children (94.4% and 93.5% respectively) and higher than the rate for all pupils (90.3%).

Although there was very little difference between male and female attendance for looked after children overall, for those in residential accommodation, males had consistently higher rates of attendance across all types of residential accommodation compared to females. Attendance rates were higher among females for children in other community accommodation (90.8% compared to 79.1%), though this refers to a relatively small number of children in this type of accommodation.

Table 1.2: Percentage attendance by accommodation type and sex

Percentage attendance for looked after children, by accommodation type and sex, when schools open 2023/24 [Note 1, Note 2, Note 3]

[Note 1] Includes ‘with prospective adopters’.

[Note 2] Includes ‘in residential school’, ‘in secure care accommodation’ and ‘crisis care’.

[Note 3] All pupils data taken from School attendance and absence statistics – gov.scot.

Number of placements

Children who had three or four placements during the year had the lowest attendance rates (79.9%) during 2023/24. The highest attendance was reported for children with five or more placements during the year (85.7%), but this may be explained by a smaller number of children with this many placements. For children who had one or two placements in the year, attendance rates were 83.9% and 83.0% respectively. (Table 1.3).

Table 1.3: Percentage attendance by number of placements within the year and sex

Percentage attendance for looked after children, by number of placements within the year and sex, 2024/24