Background Notes

Schools built or substantially refurbished

Only new builds or refurbishments with a cost of £500,000 or more for primary and £1 million or more for secondary and special schools have been included in these statistics. Where a school is being built or refurbished as part of a phased project, this is only included once a phase (or multiple phases combined) is completed and has a value greater than or equal to the amounts stated above. To avoid recording a phased project multiple times across several years, any subsequent phases will not be recorded.

School extensions meeting the cost thresholds are counted under substantial refurbishments.

School building projects may be funded by multiple sources but only one source of funding per school is recorded. This should be the source that provided the most funding.

Private Finance Initiative (PFI) refers to schools that were built or refurbished under a public/private partnership arrangement (previously known as PPP) and NPD refers to schools that were built or refurbished under Non-Profit Distributing models.

SSF refers to schools built under the Schools for the Future programme.

LEIP refers to the schools that were built under the Learning Estate Investment Programme. The first phase of this programme was announced in 2019 and the first build/refurbishment project under this project was reported in the 2023 School Estate statistics.

Statistics published prior to 2013 on number of schools built should not be used as the data were revised following robust quality assurance in later years.

School condition and suitability ratings

The condition of a school is based on the following criteria, as assessed by local authorities:

• Condition A: Good – Performing well and operating effectively (physical element carries out function totally as new including consideration of the transverse elements)
• Condition B: Satisfactory – Performing adequately but showing minor deterioration (physical element carries out function satisfactorily, may show signs of age and including consideration of some transverse elements)
• Condition C: Poor – Showing major defects and/or not operating adequately (physical element does not carry out function effectively without continuous repair, shows signs of age and does not consider most of the transverse elements)
• Condition D: Bad – Economic life expired and/or risk of failure

The suitability of a school is based on the following criteria, as assessed by local authorities:

• Suitability A: Good – Performing well and operating effectively (the school buildings and grounds support the delivery of services to children and communities)
• Suitability B: Satisfactory – Performing well but with minor problems (the school buildings and grounds generally support the delivery of services to children and communities)
• Suitability C: Poor – Showing major problems and/or not operating optimally (the school buildings and grounds impede the delivery of activities that are needed for children and communities in the school)
• Suitability D: Bad – Does not support the delivery of services to children and communities (the school buildings and grounds seriously impede the delivery of activities that are needed for children and communities in the school)

Where a school is decanted during building work etc. condition and suitability ratings for the decant accommodation should be reported.

Guidance for local authorities on calculating school condition can be found here: School estates: condition reporting core facts.

Guidance on suitability calculations can be found here: School estates: suitability reporting core facts.

General guidance on reporting on the school estate was published alongside these and can be found here: School estates: core facts overview.

Local authorities were asked to use this guidance for the first time in the 2019 School Estates Core Facts Survey. However, implementation of this was mixed, with some local authorities reporting all their ratings using the previous guidance and some reporting having used different guidance for different schools and/or condition and suitability. Quality assurance since 2020 indicates that implementation continues to be mixed but there is a move towards using the latest guidance with fewer surveys based on the old guidance now being reported. During the first five months of 2026, 400 condition surveys were carried out, with less than 2% reported to be based on the older guidance.

Testing during the development of the new guidance showed that it was technically possible that a school that would have been borderline under the old rating guidance may fall the other side of the boundary under the new guidance. However, the overall impact of any such changes at national and local authority level was determined to be minimal. This was confirmed by analysis of the 2019 school estates data which showed that changes in condition and suitability ratings at national level between 2018 and 2019 were consistent with changes between previous collections. Changes between the 2019 and 2020 collections are also consistent with previous years. Therefore, the implementation of the new guidance does not affect the validity of historical comparisons at a national and local authority level.

The condition ratings reported in statistics prior to 2019 were based on guidance previously published in 2007 to promote consistency in assessments across local authorities, although some authorities did not fully adopt this guidance before 2009/10. Suitability ratings have been collected since 2010 and were based on guidance published in 2008.

The current guidance states that full condition surveys and suitability surveys of each school should be carried out at least every five years. Based on the 2026 school estate collection, 402 (16%) schools have either a latest condition survey date more than five years ago (377) or no recorded condition survey date (25).

These figures include 12 schools built or refurbished within the past five years that may not yet be due a condition survey, as well as 24 schools where the local authority may not hold the latest condition survey dates for schools rebuilt or refurbished through PPP (Public-Private Partnership) or PFI (Private finance initiative) arrangements and where maintenance is the responsibility of third parties under the terms of building contract. Local authorities report that these arrangements ensure the schools are consistently maintained with a Condition A rating throughout the contract period, supported by continuous condition monitoring.

In addition, 303 (12%) schools have either a latest suitability survey date more than five years ago (290) or no suitability survey date recorded (13).

Reasons given by local authorities for overdue surveys include backlog caused by COVID-19 related restrictions and staffing issues. Local authorities report that around 54% of the outstanding condition surveys and 24% of the suitability surveys are planned for completion over the next year.

Analysis of historical condition and suitability ratings shows that in 90% of schools where it had been more than five years since the previous survey, the rating did not change when a new survey was carried out. Therefore, there is no evidence that a gap of more than five years between surveys will necessarily have an impact on the quality of the reported data.

School capacity

School capacity can be measured in two ways: working capacity and planning capacity.

Planning Capacity is a theoretical measure of the number of pupils that could be physically accommodated in a school, based on the total number of teaching spaces, the size of those spaces and the maximums for class sizes.

Working capacity is a more realistic measure of the total number of pupils which can be accommodated in a school in a particular session. It is calculated by adjusting the planning capacity based on the organisational needs of the school that session (e.g. considering pupil roll, composite classes, staffing etc.).

Neither working capacity nor planning capacity measures the physical size of a school building. Capacity calculations are based on teaching space and exclude ancillary facilities such as staff rooms, offices, toilets, and catering and dining areas. They may also exclude temporary accommodation, for example modular teaching units or general-purpose spaces being used as classrooms on a temporary basis, where these are not intended to form part of the authority's long-term estate provision.

Guidance on calculating primary school capacity was published by the Scottish Government in 2014. However, local authorities are responsible for determining the formulae used to calculate capacity, and approaches may therefore vary between authorities and school types.

Information on the calculation methods used by each authority is provided in Tables 6.1 and 6.2 of the school estates supplementary statistics. Local authorities also vary in whether they report planning capacity or working capacity. These methodological differences should be borne in mind when comparing capacity statistics across authorities.

The statistics on the percentage of capacity used in each school in this publication were calculated using the number of pupils recorded at each school in the September pupil census. A small number of authorities/schools chose to provide updated pupil rolls during the School Estates Core Facts Survey collection process. The updated rolls are used in these cases.

Schools that opened between the September pupil census and 1 April will be recorded as having no pupils on roll unless the local authorities supplied figures within the School Estates Core Facts data collection.

These limitations of the capacity statistics presented here mean that this information should not be used in isolation to determine whether a school has capacity to accommodate more pupils.

Information on the capacity of special schools is not collected as this is not an appropriate measure given the specialised nature of the facilities provided and the variation in the needs of their pupils and the space they require.

The capacity for some primary or secondary schools with special units may exclude the special units on the basis that capacity is not collected for special schools. However, their rolls may include the pupils attending the special unit in addition to those based in the primary/secondary school. This may make the school’s capacity use percentage appear higher than it is.

Some schools with Gaelic units report their capacities and rolls combined on the main school’s record rather than splitting them across the separate schools’ records. In these cases, the roll and capacity of the Gaelic units appear to be zero. This has occurred where the Gaelic unit is based in the building of the main school and the local authority has not split the capacity across the two establishments. Schools where this has occurred can be identified by comments explaining this on their records in the school level dataset.

Data on the total gross internal floor area (GIA) and area within the perimeter (AWP) of the school estate is no longer collected.

Shared campuses

A school should be recorded as a shared campus if it shares a site with another separate school and they share facilities used in the normal delivery of education. This includes facilities such as playgrounds, sports pitches, gyms and assembly halls but does not include facilities such as access roads and car parks. This applies whether the schools permanently share the site and if a school has been temporarily decanted into another school with a differing SEED code (unique identifier code for schools).

Schools sharing with nurseries should not be recorded as shared campuses unless they also share with another separate school.

A through school – a school with the same SEED code for primary and secondary – should not be recorded as a shared campus unless it shares a site with another separate school. Special units where the same head teacher heads the unit and the school should also not be recorded as shared campuses.

Community services

A school is recorded as having community services if there is space within it exclusively dedicated to and managed by those providing community services, such as dental, medical or police or social work. This does not refer to use of school amenities such as sports or cultural facilities by community groups. The 2008 survey guidance clarified and restricted what should be included in this category, this should be borne in mind if making comparisons prior to 2008.

Costs

The estimated cost to local authorities of extracting and validating this information is £13,200 based on the 2026 collection.

Proposed changes

As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure that our statistical products effectively meet user needs, we are considering changes to the scope of these statistics. To enable us to focus quality assurance and presentation on the key measures — namely, the number of new builds/refurbishments, and condition and suitability ratings—we are proposing to release the remaining data collected (e.g. capacity, value of work, future plans) as a separate management information dataset with limited quality assurance.

We welcome your feedback on these proposals. Please get in touch with us at school.stats@gov.scot to share your views.