Education Outcomes for Looked After Children 2024/25

Introduction

Looked after children are defined as those in the care of their local authority (Children Scotland Act 1995). Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) covers a range of policies aimed at helping every child and young person in Scotland reach their full potential, including looked after children, as they grow and develop into successful learners. Scottish Government, Education Scotland and local government are working together to improve the educational outcomes of looked after children and young people as part of The Promise. The aim is to improve the experience, achievement, engagement in learning and attainment of those who have been looked after and support their transition from education.

The Scottish Attainment Challenge aims to drive improved outcomes for children and young people, empowering headteachers and local authorities to take approaches that best suit the needs of their most disadvantaged children and young people.

An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland

These statistics are official statistics. Official statistics are statistics that are produced by crown bodies, those acting on behalf of crown bodies, or those specified in statutory orders, as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.

This report includes statistics for school leavers who were:

• Most recently looked after in the last year
• Most recently looked after for some duration after turning 12 years old, but not in the last year
• Most recently looked after between ages 5 and 12

These categories are mutually exclusive, and are based on each child’s most recent episode of care. Analysing the statistics in this way allows us to explore the educational outcomes for children who have been looked after, according to how recently they were looked after. Analysis is generally not possible for those children most recently looked after before age 5, as a Scottish Candidate Number (SCN) would not have been available for inclusion in the looked after children data returns at the time for these children. Time series are only shown in this report where the data are comparable over time.

Throughout this report we will refer to children who were looked after at some point during the period 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025, for any duration of time, as pupils or school leavers looked after within the year, or looked after pupils. Children who were not looked after within the year, but who were looked after for some duration in earlier years, will be referred to as: pupils most recently looked after since turning 12; and pupils most recently looked after between age 5 and 12.

Attendance, Exclusions and Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels Statistics are provided only for children who were looked after in the last year (and all pupils). This follows feedback from users on the additional complexity of interpreting these statistics for younger children who were looked after only at earlier stages of school, given the variation in the time that has passed since turning those ages.

More information is given in the methodology section of the background notes.

Overview

The first section of this publication covers school attendance, including attendance data for 9,181 pupils looked after during the year. The second section focuses on school exclusions for the same cohorts of pupils.

The third section focuses on the achievement of Curriculum for Excellence levels (CfE). This covers 1,574 pupils who were looked after at some point during 2024/25, and 412 pupils in special schools/units who were looked after during the year.

The final two sections of this publication cover stages and attainment, and post-school destinations of young people who left school in 2024/25. An estimated 1,049 pupils who left school in 2024/25 had been looked after at some point between 1 August 2024 and 31 July 2025. They represent 1.9% of all 55,801 school leavers in 2024/25. During 2024/25, there were an additional 427 school leavers most recently looked after since they had turned 12 years old, and a further 616 pupils who were most recently looked after between the ages of 5 and 12.