Education Outcomes for Looked After Children 2024/25
Information on attendance, exclusions, achievement of curriculum for excellence levels for looked after children in Scotland, and attainment and leaver destinations of looked after school leavers in 2024/25.
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 9,181 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 was 83.8% in 2024/25 compared to 83.7% in 2023/24. The attendance rate for all pupils increased slightly from 90.3% to 91.0% over the same period.
- The attendance rates for pupils looked after in foster care placements (94.0% for foster care placements provided by the local authority; 94.9% for foster care placements purchased by the local authority) were higher than the attendance rate for all pupils (91.0%). Pupils who were looked after at home with parents during 2024/25 had the lowest attendance rates (69.8%).
- The gap in attendance rates between looked after pupils (78.5%) and all pupils (88.4%) in secondary schools widened to 9.9 percentage points in 2024/25 (from 9.3 percentage points in 2023/24). For primary pupils, the gap increased from 3.3 percentage points to 3.8 percentage points over the same period.
- The attendance rate for looked after pupils during 2024/25 varied depending on the number of placements the pupil had had. Pupils with three or more placements during the year had the lowest attendance rates (81.4%). The attendance rates were higher for those with one (83.8%) or two (83.8%) placements during the year.
Attendance rates
During 2024/25, the attendance rate for pupils looked after during the year was 83.8%, compared with 83.7% in 2023/24. For all pupils, during 2024/25, the attendance rate increased by 0.7 percentage points to 91.0% (Chart 1).
The gap in attendance rates 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 5.8 percentage points in 2022/23 to 6.6 percentage points in 2023/24 and to 7.2 percentage points in 2024/25.
Chart 1: Attendance of pupils looked after in the last year and all pupils
Percentage attendance of pupils looked after in the last year and all pupils, 2009/10 to 2024/25.
School Stage
In 2024/25, for primary pupils looked after during the year, attendance was 89.3% (Table 1) compared to 93.1% for all pupils. For secondary pupils looked after during the year, attendance was 78.5%, compared to 88.4% for all pupils. Within special schools during 2024/25, pupils looked after during the year (82.7%) also had lower rates of attendance than all pupils (87.9%).
Table 1: Percentage attendance by stage, sector and sex
Percentage attendance of all pupils and looked after pupils by stage, sector and sex, 2009/10 to 2024/25 [Note 1], [Note 2].
|
|
Looked After Pupils (all within the last year) |
All Pupils |
||||
|
Stage |
Female |
Male |
Total |
Female |
Male |
Total |
|
P1 |
89.3 |
87.9 |
88.6 |
93.5 |
93.4 |
93.4 |
|
P2 |
90.9 |
88.6 |
89.7 |
93.6 |
93.3 |
93.4 |
|
P3 |
89.3 |
89.1 |
89.2 |
93.6 |
93.3 |
93.4 |
|
P4 |
91.2 |
89.3 |
90.3 |
93.5 |
93.2 |
93.3 |
|
P5 |
91.7 |
88.8 |
90.3 |
93.4 |
93.0 |
93.2 |
|
P6 |
90.6 |
88.3 |
89.4 |
92.8 |
92.5 |
92.7 |
|
P7 |
88.2 |
87.8 |
88.0 |
92.7 |
92.2 |
92.4 |
|
S1 |
81.0 |
83.6 |
82.3 |
90.0 |
90.2 |
90.1 |
|
S2 |
73.2 |
79.3 |
76.3 |
86.9 |
88.2 |
87.5 |
|
S3 |
72.1 |
72.6 |
72.4 |
85.5 |
87.1 |
86.3 |
|
S4 |
78.1 |
78.2 |
78.2 |
87.1 |
88.3 |
87.7 |
|
S5 |
85.7 |
84.2 |
84.9 |
88.8 |
89.7 |
89.3 |
|
S6 |
87.9 |
85.3 |
86.5 |
90.4 |
91.2 |
90.7 |
|
Primary |
90.2 |
88.5 |
89.3 |
93.3 |
93.0 |
93.1 |
|
Secondary |
77.7 |
79.3 |
78.5 |
87.9 |
88.9 |
88.4 |
|
Special |
88.5 |
80.3 |
82.7 |
87.8 |
88.0 |
87.9 |
|
Scotland |
83.9 |
83.6 |
83.8 |
90.8 |
91.1 |
91.0 |
[Note 1] Due to the effects of rounding some totals will not equal the sum of their parts.
[Note 2] All pupils data taken from School attendance and absence statistics.
Placement type and sex
Looked after children can be placed in two broad types of accommodation – community settings or residential accommodation. Table 2 shows the attendance rates for pupils looked after within the year by their placement type, by sex for pupils who had one placement, and by sex for pupils who had more than one placement.
Generally, attendance rates were higher for pupils in community accommodation, but this varied by accommodation type. The attendance rates for pupils looked after at home with parents were the lowest for all accomodation types during 2024/5 (69.8%). This compares to pupils in with foster care placements purchased by the local authority and foster carer placements provided by the local authority, where the attendance rates were highest for looked after children (94.9% and 94.0% respectively) and higher than the rate for all pupils (91.0%).
Although there was very little difference between male and female attendance for looked after pupils overall, for those in residential accommodation, males had generally higher rates of attendance compared to females. Attendance rates were higher among females for pupils in other community accommodation (94.9% compared to 77.6%), though this refers to a relatively small number of pupils in this type of accommodation.
Table 2: Percentage attendance by accommodation type and sex
Percentage attendance for looked after children, by accommodation type and sex, 2024/25 [Note 1], [Note 2], [Note 3].
|
Accommodation type |
Female |
Male |
Total |
|
In the community (children with one placement) |
84.3% |
83.7% |
84.0% |
|
At home with parents |
68.7 |
70.7 |
69.8 |
|
With friends or relatives |
87.4 |
86.3 |
86.9 |
|
With foster carers provided by LA |
94.0 |
94.0 |
94.0 |
|
With foster carers purchased by LA |
94.7 |
95.0 |
94.9 |
|
In other community[Note 1] |
94.9 |
77.6 |
81.7 |
|
Residential Accommodation (children with one placement) |
79.9% |
84.3% |
82.4% |
|
In local authority home |
75.2 |
82.4 |
78.9 |
|
In voluntary home |
85.7 |
88.0 |
87.1 |
|
In other residential[Note 2] |
85.8 |
85.6 |
85.8 |
|
More than one placement |
83.6% |
83.0% |
83.3% |
|
All looked after within the last year |
83.9% |
83.6% |
83.8% |
|
All Pupils |
90.8% |
91.1% |
91.0% |
[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.
Number of placements
Pupils who had three or more placements during the year had the lowest attendance rates (81.4%) during 2024/25 (Table 3). The highest attendance was reported for pupils with one or two placements during the year (83.8%).
Table 3: Percentage attendance by number of placements within the year and sex
Percentage attendance for looked after pupils, by number of placements within the year and sex, 2024/25.
|
Number of placements |
Number of Female Pupils |
Female Percentage |
Number of Male Pupils |
Male Percentage |
Total Number of Pupils |
Total Percentage |
|
1 |
3,780 |
84.0 |
4,218 |
83.7 |
8,007 |
83.8 |
|
2 |
428 |
83.9 |
474 |
83.7 |
902 |
83.8 |
|
3 or more |
136 |
82.5 |
136 |
80.2 |
272 |
81.4 |
|
All looked after within the last year |
4,344 |
83.9% |
4,828 |
83.6% |
9,181 |
83.8% |
Attendance and absence type
The overall absence rate for pupils looked after during the year in 2024/25 was 16.2% compared to 9.0% for all pupils (Table 4). Looked after pupils has a higher proportion of unauthorised absences than all pupils (8.6% and 3.7% respectively). Pupils who had been looked after during the year also had a higher proportion of authorised absences (7.6%) compared to all pupils (5.3%). Unauthorised absences accounted for 52.8% of all absences for looked after children in 2024/25. This compares to 40.7% of all absences for all pupils.
Table 4: Percentage attendance and absence by absence type
Percentage attendance and absence type for looked after and all pupils, 2024/25 [Note 1].
|
Attendance / absence type |
Looked after within the year |
All pupils |
|
Attendance |
83.8% |
91.0% |
|
All absences |
16.2% |
9.0% |
|
Authorised absence |
7.6 |
5.3 |
|
Unauthorised absence |
8.6 |
3.7 |
|
Temporary exclusion |
low |
low |
[Note 1] Due to the effects of rounding some totals will not equal the sum of their parts.
[Note 2] All pupils data taken from School attendance and absence statistics.
Contact
childrens.statistics@gov.scot