National Improvement Framework plan 2025: update on activity

Outcome 4

Outcome 4 – high levels of achievement across the curriculum for all learners, with action to close the poverty-related attainment gap.

Action

SI122

The Scottish Government will continue to fund the universal provision of free school meals for all pupils in P1-P5 and all pupils in special schools, as well as for eligible pupils from P6-S6. Over the coming year, the Scottish Government will work with COSLA to prepare the infrastructure to support the further expansion of free school meals.

Current position

Ongoing

Funding has been allocated to local authorities to support the infrastructure development required to deliver the expansion of free school meals to pupils in receipt of Scottish Child Payment (SCP) in Primaries 6 and 7. This phase started in February 2025 and will make free school meals available to an additional 25,000 pupils.

By the time the roll-out of this phase is complete, 84% of primary school pupils will be eligible to receive a free school lunch during the school term-time.

A further Test of Change was created to support those in receipt of SCP in S1 to 3 in 8 partner local authorities. It began delivering meals in 60 schools across those participating local authorities in August 2025 and will run to July 2026. This policy will support around 6,100 newly eligible pupils and will be independently evaluated.

How we will measure impact

We are working with local authorities to understand the infrastructure requirements and to support the expansion of free school meals. The current phase of the free school meal expansion programme supports free school meals being made available to primary 6 & 7 pupils in receipt of the Scottish Child Payment. This began rolling out in February 2025.

The Free School Meals programme is managed by Governance and Accountable Officer Groups, who will help monitor progress. Scottish Futures Trust is assisting in monitoring of delivery.

In addition, the Test of Change phase will be independently assessed by researchers. This will help inform future phases of the FSM Programme.

Action

PI33

Scottish Government will work with Education Scotland and authorities to support progress towards local authority stretch aims. This will include:

• Develop an enhanced guiding coalition to support an acceleration of progress towards achieving the mission of the Scottish Attainment Challenge.
• Develop partnership working across services and the third sector to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty, with a focus on engaging children and young people for their views on this work.
• Develop and publish an updated Framework for Recovery and Accelerating Progress for 2023/24, reflecting learning from 2022/23 and the 2022 NIF.
• Develop and undertake refreshed evaluation strategy for 2022/23 through to end of parliamentary term.

Current position

Ongoing

Local authorities and schools continue to use Attainment Scotland Funding to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty and close the poverty related attainment gap, supported by the advice and challenge of Education Scotland attainment advisors and through continued funding for the core funding streams of Pupil Equity Fund (PEF), Strategic Equity Fund (SEF) and the Care Experienced Children and Young People Fund (CECYP).

The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills set out her commitment to continue this funding into the 2026/27 financial year to provide certainty to local authorities and schools and aid their planning given much of this funding supports additional teachers and staffing.

A summary report highlighting how 129 schools across all 32 local authorities were using their PEF Sampling to improve outcomes for children and families impacted by poverty was published in May 2025.

The Scottish Attainment Challenge supports third sector partners Young Scot, Youth Link Scotland and Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) to engage directly with children and young people.

We held a Directors of Education Conference in September 2025 to showcase good practice, share learning and further aid collaborative working.

The SAC policy team are undergoing visits with all local authorities to identify how SEF and the CECYP funding are being used to accelerate progress - to be completed in early 2026.

How we will measure impact

An Attainment Scotland Evaluation NIF report was published in June 2025, summarising the evidence on progress against the NIF Outcomes in attainment and health and wellbeing, and the gap between pupils from the most and least deprived areas. A school based survey was also published in September 2025, and a Case Study evaluation in November 2025.

A summative evaluation of the Scottish Attainment Challenge to be published in March 2026, highlighting the impact of the programme over the past decade

Framework for Recovery and Accelerated Progress next steps: SAC Programme is now working with LAs and with ADES to support progress towards these aims over the period 2023/24 - 2025/26.

Outcome: LAs make progress towards their stretch aims and variation reduces.

Action

PI36

From the September 2024 Insight update onwards, we will reflect the recommendations made by the ASL review within Insight by seeking to include an ever wider range of achievement.

Current position

Ongoing

Four new award providers were included in the September 2024 Update (as released on 18 Sept). To raise the profile of Wider Award Providers, an email went to all School Leaders and LA Insight leads in December 2023 outlining the process of adding Wider Award Providers (WAP) to Insight. We continue to work with existing and new providers to ensure data is received in a timely manner to be included in each Update. Highlighting the ability for schools to have WAPs added to Insight continues to be a core part of Advisor presentation to schools. Work on the September 2025 Update has commenced. We intend to add a number of new Wider Award Providers in this Update. The September 2025 Update was published in mid-September. Six new providers were added for this Update. An email went to all establishments reminding them of the process of adding new providers to the tool.

How we will measure impact

The outcome of this work is to continue to reflect the work done in schools with Award Providers. With an increasing number of providers delivering qualifications within schools it is essential that Insight reflects this. The number of providers who share attainment data with us now stands at 34 providers, with six new providers added in the Sept 2025 Update. Through effective communications there is a greater understanding within stakeholders (both schools and providers) of the process required in setting up and maintaining data sharing agreements with WAPs.

Advisor continues to promote to schools the process of having new providers added to Insight. This work will remain ongoing as new providers are used by schools and as we look to include these providers within Insight. We are already in dialogue with new providers for inclusion in September 2026.

Action

4/1

As set out under Outcome 1, Education Scotland will work with local authorities to build capacity and improve outcomes by developing clear and robust improvement projects that utilise attainment and achievement data.

Current position

Ongoing

The Impact of Attainment Scotland Funding (ASF) on Numeracy and Mathematics 2022-25 Education Scotland report, published in September 2025, contains several practice examples at both local authority and school level. These examples have been shared with the system through the report and can be considered in practice across local authorities to bring about improvements in achievement and attainment in Numeracy and Mathematics.

At the next Scottish Attainment Challenge Local Authority Network there will be an opportunity to share further examples as well as reflections on the report and how it connects with the Curriculum Improvement Cycle.

Next Steps: Using Insight to drive improvement decisions with a focus on closing attainment gaps we will collaborate with local authorities to strengthen data analysis capability and support LA teams to identify attainment gaps at both school and local authority level. Assist central officers to re-evaluate how secondary school improvement meetings are managed to use Insight data to design and implement improvement actions that address equity gaps. Through analysis of Stretch Aims (Attainment & Achievement) we will inform, share and promote wider approaches to improvement to support the closing of attainment gaps by developing data literacy for senior leaders and practitioners, particularly at Senior Phase.

How we will measure impact

The Scottish Government will continue to evaluate the Attainment Scotland Fund in line with its published evaluation strategy, with key intelligence on the importance of young people’s readiness to learn, engagement with families and communities, progress across the range of NIF measures and long term impact of the programme to be evaluated. Evaluation outputs will be published throughout the 2025 and 2026.

The learning from the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) sampling work with over 120 schools across Scotland on how PEF is contributing towards improving the educational outcomes of children and young people/families impacted by poverty, will be shared with headteachers, local authorities and key stakeholders, as well as the evidence gathered by and professional expertise of Education Scotland, which will underpin this work.

Action

4/2

HMIE will continue to engage with settings and schools where the quality of education needs to improve and share examples of effective practice to support improved outcomes.

Current position

Closed - superseded by new action in the Improvement Plan

HMI have engaged with a number of schools through the Annual Inspection Programme 2024/25 where the quality of education needs to improve. This includes ELC, primary, secondary and special schools. Heads of Inspection link with local authorities and have ongoing discussions about the progress of schools and settings where the outcome of inspection is continued engagement.

How we will measure impact

HMIE will monitor the percentage of schools requiring a further inspection from HM Inspectors.

Action

4/3

HMIE will publish a national report on approaches taken by local authorities to support school improvement.

Current position

Complete

HMIE published a national report, local authority approaches to supporting improvement.

How we will measure impact

The Scottish Government and Education Scotland will continue to monitor local authorities’ and national attainment and participation data for the key NIF measures, and within them core stretch aims for progress by 2025/26 set by local authorities.

Action

4/4

Education Scotland will design and deliver bespoke ‘leadership for equity support across 32 local authorities to augment school approaches to improving attainment.

Current position

Ongoing

The national professional learning resource Equity: Mitigating the Impact of Poverty on Scotland’s Children and Young People is currently being piloted across four local authorities. Following the pilot, it will be launched through Attainment Advisors and communication channels, ensuring that all Early Years, school, and CLD practitioners have access.

Next Steps: There will be an evaluation of the pilot before the end of the school summer term 2025. Final amendments will be made before final publication August 2026.

How we will measure impact

The Scottish Government, in partnership with Education Scotland, will continue to monitor both local authority and national attainment and participation data against the key NIF measures. Within these, progress toward the core Stretch Aims set by local authorities for 2025/26 will be closely tracked.

Action

4/5

We will maximise and sustain the impact of the £1 billion Scottish Attainment Challenge and intensify action to deal with the ongoing impacts of the pandemic on children’s progress. This will be achieved through the rigorous evaluation of the programme to-date, work with schools, Education Scotland, ADES and Scottish Government to identify and highlight the approaches and interventions that have had the greatest impact locally and nationally. This body of evidence on progress and impact – shared on Scotland’s Equity Toolkit, and through engagement across these key partners and schools – will help local authorities and schools to:

• sustain the cultural focus on equity in education
• draw on strong examples of impactful local practice
• work as a networked learning system to learn from schools and authorities across the country where progress has been made and approaches to closing the poverty related attainment gap have been mainstreamed.

Current position

Ongoing

Local authorities and schools continue to use Attainment Scotland Funding to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty and close the poverty related attainment gap, supported by the advice and challenge of Education Scotland attainment advisors.

The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills set out her commitment to continue this funding into the 2026/27 financial year to provide certainty to local authorities and schools for a further year, recognising the funding supports almost 700 teaching posts within c.3000 jobs in total.

The Scottish Attainment Challenge evaluation continues. An Attainment Scotland Evaluation NIF report was published in June 2025, summarising the evidence on progress against the NIF Outcomes in attainment and health and wellbeing, and the gap between pupils from the most and least deprived areas. We published results from a school based survey in September 2025, followed by publication of a Case Study evaluation in November 2025.

Work is underway between ADES, Education Scotland Senior Regional Advisors and the inspectorate in ADES Quads, linking to the stretch aims and accelerating progress towards them (as well as addressing/focusing on other improvement priorities).

The Scottish Attainment Challenge programme continues to support third sector partners Young Scot, Youth Link Scotland and Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) to engage directly with children and young people on key issues such as readiness to learn and cost of the school day.

We held a Directors of Education Conference in September 2025 to showcase good practice, aid collaborative working, and discuss the future of the Scottish Attainment Challenge.

The SAC policy team are undergoing visits with all 32 local authorities to understand more clearly how Attainment Scotland Funding is being used to accelerate progress in improving the educational outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty – the first stage is on track to be completed by Dec 2025.

How we will measure impact

The Scottish Government will continue to evaluate the Attainment Scotland Fund in line with its published evaluation strategy.

A summative evaluation of the Scottish Attainment Challenge will be published in March 2026, highlighting the impact of the programme over the past decade, including the valuable learning and good practice from the PEF Report and Education Scotland evidence and reports.

Action

4/6

We will provide £37m in 2025/26 to deliver the expansion of free school meals programme to those in receipt of Scottish Child Payment in Primaries 6 and 7. This support will help provide access to healthy and nutritious meals for around 25,000 children.

Current position

Ongoing

Capital funding has been distributed to local authorities to support the infrastructure development required to deliver the expansion of free school meals.

A baseline of progress towards delivery by August 2026 has been established with data gathered from all local authorities. Progress against targets will be regularly monitored.

To support this phase of the Free School Meals Programme, we established a legal gateway to allow data sharing between Social Security Scotland (SSS) and LAs. This will allow LAs to identify pupils whose families are in receipt of SCP in P6/7 and S1 to 3 age groups. Data sharing has started with those local authorities that have completed data sharing agreements with SSS.

We have created a further Test of Change Phase which will support those in receipt of SCP in S1 to 3 in 8 local authorities who were selected to partner with the Scottish Government in this new phase. Roll-out started in August 2025 in 60 schools across the 8 LAs and will run to July 2026.

How we will measure impact

We are working with local authorities to better understand the infrastructure requirements and to support the expansion of free school meals. The next phase of the free school meal expansion programme will see free school meals being made available to primary 6 & 7 pupils in receipt of the Scottish Child Payment from February 2025.

The Free School Meals programme is managed by Governance and Accountable Officer Group, who will help monitor progress. Scottish Futures Trust is assisting in monitoring of delivery.

In addition, the Test of Change phase will be independently assessed by researchers. This will help inform future phases of the FSM Programme.

Action

4/7

We will deliver Wave 3 of The Children and Young People Improvement Collaborative National Improving Writing programme (2024/25) with five further local authorities. Plan and deliver Wave 4 (academic year 2025/26). The 12-week writing programme is designed to equip teachers with the skills to monitor progress in their classroom and collate data for improvement to guide their decision making. The programme works because it combines improvement science skills with an evidenced based standardised approach for teaching writing.

Current position

Ongoing

At latest count 333 schools were part of the National Improving Writing Programme, across 15 local authorities. With over 1000 participants (teachers and head teachers) trained.

Wave 4 and Implementation Cohort 2 launched on 10 and 11 September, reaching even more schools and over 200 participants (class teachers / head teachers / local leads / attainment advisors). Additional cohorts are taking place across all 15 local authorities from Waves 1-3, run by the local capacity that we have grown. The programme is reaching beyond first level classrooms; from P1 – P7 and some testing happening in secondaries.

The Programme continues to demonstrate impact with Wave 3 showing the percentage of teachers extremely or very confident to teach writing rose from 16% to 93%, the percentage of teachers extremely or very confident to assess writing rose from 12% to 90, the percentage of teachers who enjoy teaching writing a great deal or a lot rose from 31% to 85% and the percentage of pupils enjoying writing a great deal or a lot (reported by teacher) rose from 22% to 80%.

Next Steps: Continue to deliver Wave 4 and Implementation Wave (cohort 2) as a National Faculty. Support Wave 4 Local Leads to deliver Cohort 2 of the programme to new schools beginning January/February 2026. Continue to support Wave 1-3 Local Leads with delivery locally where required.

How we will measure impact

Education Scotland will assess the impact of the Improving Writing Programme via: monitoring the impact on attainment reported by teachers at class level, annual ACEL data at school and local authority level; monitoring implementation of the ‘Writing Bundle’; maintain connections with Local Leads delivering the programme to support / ensure fidelity of implementation; teachers tracking pupil enjoyment; interviews and qualitative feedback summarising impact from local leads, staff and children.

Action

4/8

We will have a continued focus on embedding quality at the heart of the delivery of funded ELC services. To support consistently high-quality experiences for children, the Scottish Government will collaborate with all relevant agencies to ensure that there is greater alignment and strategic direction for improvement work. This will include simplifying and streamlining access to guidance for the sector and continued sponsorship of the Care Inspectorate ELC Improvement Programme in 2025-26, to provide bespoke improvement support to settings at risk of failing to meet the National Standard for funded ELC.

Current position

Ongoing

ELC Improvement Programme: The Care Inspectorate is currently delivering the 12th cohort of the programme. The programme has now supported 573 services and benefitted around 37,912 children.

ELC Guidance Project: multi-partner working group established and working towards the delivery of two key outputs - principles for developing new guidance and a single point of access to ELC sector guidance via the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) professional learning portal (March 2026).

How we will measure impact

ELC Improvement Programme: In 2025-26, the Care Inspectorate have commission an independent evaluation of the impact of the programme, due November 2025. The evaluation report will be published on the Care Inspectorate Hub.

ELC Guidance Project: Impact of outcomes will be measured through a project measurement plan. We will also draw upon Care Inspectorate annual publication `ELC Statistics', 2026 publication.

Action

4/9

We will ensure that the children who will benefit most, benefit first from high quality funded ELC, by providing targeted early access to funded ELC at age two. The eligibility criteria use proxy measures for ‘disadvantage’, modelled on criteria for access to Free School Meals. Our aim is that by providing these children with early access to high quality ELC, they are more likely to achieve similar outcomes long-term to their peers who start funded ELC at age three.

Current position

Closed - this describes the current policy for access to funded ELC at age two.

How we will measure impact

Early learning and childcare expansion programme: evaluation strategy.

Action

4/10

We will work with local authorities and the Improvement Service on a National Improvement Project focusing on boosting take up of the two-year-old offer among the families most at risk of poverty, and in areas with some of the lowest take up rates.

Current position

Ongoing

Continue to work with Improvement Service on Project including: intensive work with 5 LAs (completed phase one, working on phases two and three concurrently); have developed a workplan to provide all LAs with opportunities to share good practice and access resources/information.

Intensive work phase descriptions: Phase 1 - Scoping and Discovery (National summary scoping report, publication to be confirmed); Phase 2 - Engagement and Co-Design; Phase 3 - Implementation and Support; Phase 4 - Evaluation and Reflection.

How we will measure impact

Early learning and childcare expansion programme: evaluation strategy