Scotland's Devolved Employment Services: No One Left Behind Statistical Summary May 2025
Official statistics in development on the No One Left Behind strategic approach to employability delivery, reporting on those receiving support from April 2019 to December 2024.
About this publication
This is the 30th edition of this quarterly statistical report providing summary information on Scotland’s devolved employability services. This report focuses on the No One Left Behind strategic approach to employability delivery in Scotland covering the period April 2019 to December 2024. A separate report covers Fair Start Scotland (Access all employability statistics - opens in a new window).
Further detailed statistics for No One Left Behind are published in accompanying tables alongside this report.
No One Left Behind
No One Left Behind, introduced from April 2019, is a different approach to employability delivery which moves away from funding and delivering a number of separate and distinct employability programmes, to a more flexible approach. This system is more tailored and responsive to the needs of people of all ages who want help and support on their journey towards, into and in work - particularly people with health conditions, disabled people and others who are disadvantaged in the labour market.
The key priorities for No One Left Behind were set-out in the No One Left Behind: employability strategic plan 2024 to 2027 (Access the strategic plan – opens in new window) published in September 2024.
Please refer to supplementary Background and Methodology Report (opens in new window) for more details on No One Left Behind and associated data.
Shared Measurement Framework Data Reporting Template
From October 2022 (July 2022 for 13 Local Authorities who adopted the new template early), a new data reporting template (Access the new data template - opens in new window) co-designed with a cross-sectoral group and aligned to the Shared Measurement Framework (SMF) has been in place. We continue to work closely with Local Authorities to improve the accuracy and quality of returns following this transition.
Official Statistics in Development
Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics (Access the Code of Practice – opens in new window) that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. The statistics presented are Official Statistics in Development.
You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards by emailing: employabilitydata@gov.scot. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing: regulation@statistics.gov.uk.
Data Developments and Issues in this Edition
- We have updated the methodology used to measure the progression of participants who have entered employment. Please see Progression of Participants section for more details.
Table 1: Specific data quality issues in this publication
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Description |
Mitigation |
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Some local authorities such as City of Edinburgh are carrying out a review of participant starts as they were missing some starts from previous reports. Due to this the current submission will see added participants in previous quarters, the impact is less pronounced at a national level.
Some local authorities, for example Glasgow City and North Lanarkshire are correcting historical data for some participants. This includes updating participants status for some variables to better reflect what is or is not known about that participant e.g. changing participants from not having a characteristic to unknown if it cannot be confirmed that participant definitely does not have this characteristic or other information provided is contradictory. While these updates impact data related to these Local Authorities, including data on not disabled participants, not lone parent participants and participants without childcare as a circumstance, the impact is less pronounced at a national level. |
We are working with Local Authorities to ensure the highest level of quality for data returns and continue to monitor returns closely. While local monitoring and improvements to data quality may cause short-term changes to previous data, this should be considered as a positive as the overall quality of data improves from these updates.
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Falkirk are experiencing issues with some historical data meaning information has been updated into different categories, or, in a number of cases a higher number of participants changed to “unknown” for variables that we would expect to remain static. The biggest impact is observed for data related to Falkirk. The impact nationally is less pronounced. |
We have worked with Falkirk to help identify the source of this issue and Falkirk will continue to implement updates to their data returns to correct issues with their historical data. While this may cause short-term changes to previous data, this should be considered as a positive as the overall quality of data improves from these updates. |
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Parent data for No One Left Behind was collected from the start of year 2 (April 2020 onwards). It came to our attention that in a small number of cases participants that are parents were not counted towards the parents total. |
We have implemented a fix to include the small number of parents that were not counted towards the parents total in previous publications. |
Please note that general information on data quality improvement is available in the supplementary Background and Methodology Report (Opens in new window).