National Improvement Framework 2026: improvement plan
The 2026 improvement plan provides the full details of the actions that will be taken to deliver the seven outcomes set out in the 2026 National Improvement Framework, the evidence to support them, and how we will measure progress.
Measuring the attainment gap
Progress towards 2025/26 local authority stretch aims
Since the pandemic, ACEL data has improved compared to 2020/21, first returning towards pre-pandemic levels, and building on that improvement across 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25. The improvement over this period shows local authorities collectively making progress towards their stretch aims for 2025/26. However, as in previous years, progress varies between individual local authorities.
Looking across the core stretch aims, the 2024/25 ACEL data for primary school show record high overall attainment for literacy (75%) and for numeracy, the highest to date, equal with 2023/24 (80%) and record low poverty related attainment gaps (literacy 19.4 percentage points; numeracy 16.6pp). This indicates that in aggregate, local authorities are making progress towards their stretch aims for both overall attainment and closing the poverty-related attainment gap.
For school leavers with one or more awards at SCQF levels 5 and 6 the gap increased between 2022/23 and 2023/24 (from 16.6pp to 18.1pp; and from 31.5pp to 31.8pp respectively) meaning greater progress is needed if local authorities are to make progress towards their 2025/26 stretch aims. It is encouraging, however, that in this year’s exam results, which feed into school leaver attainment data, the pass rate for National 5 and Highers was up and the poverty-related attainment gap at National 5 and Higher had narrowed. Alongside this, young people were awarded over 100,000 SQA vocational and technical qualifications in 2025, also an encouraging sign for future progress towards senior phase stretch aims.
For the Annual Participation Measure, Skills Development Scotland data published in August 2025 showed that compared to 2024 the poverty-related participation gap had widened by 0.2pp to 8.4pp, with the gap at its second narrowest since 2016/17.