Summary

• The No One Left Behind: Statistical Summary is a quarterly statistical report focusing on the No One Left Behind strategic approach to employability delivery in Scotland. It is currently labelled as Official Statistics in Development and bound by the Code of Practice for Statistics and its standards of trustworthiness, quality and value.

• This paper details a deep dive of the methodology surrounding No One Left Behind participants who enter employment, and those that remain in employment at followup points. It sets out how the data is collected and how the numbers are calculated, identifies any data quality issues and highlights challenges around the current approach.

• Following this deep dive, we identified five main areas of improvement. From May 2025 onwards we will break down progression analysis by start year and quarter and calculate the average number of days of No One Left Behind support participants receive before they enter employment. We will also change the way follow-up denominators are calculated, only including participants who have been in employment long enough to reach each the relevant follow-up point.

• Further improvements that will require more time to implement as data quality is improved are also set out, as well as proposals over time to apply the same deep dive approach to other positive outcomes, recognising that employment is not the only positive destination participants can achieve.