Strategic Equity Funding: national operational guidance 2026-2027

Accountability

In the context of the Scottish Attainment Challenge, local authorities are responsible for:

• Preparing Strategic Equity Fund plans, including stretch aims, to contribute to the mission of the Scottish Attainment Challenge.
• Supporting school improvement through providing assistance to schools includingASN provisions and special schools, and partners by:
  • supporting schools to identify poverty-related gaps through coaching, professional learning and supporting access to tracking and monitoring and data analysis tools;
  • providing professional learning around planning (data, outcomes & measures), interventions & approaches;
  • offering practical support to schools, where required, in terms of financial management and HR; and
  • supporting and challenging schools in their use of PEF to make progress in improving the health and wellbeing and educational outcomes of children and young people impacted by poverty.
• Ongoing, active monitoring of plans for recovery and to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap and improve health and wellbeing, supporting and challenging key stakeholders and/or partners; and adjusting plans where necessary to ensure progress.
• Monitoring and reporting on progress towards their locally identified stretch aims throughNIF reports/ Standards and Quality Reports each year.
• Reporting on the effective investment of Attainment Scotland Funding.
• Collaborating with a range of services across the local authority and in local communities to secure additional contributions to the mission of the Scottish Attainment Challenge.

Partnerships

Parents and local communities are a valuable source of support, expertise and experience in working with young people experiencing poverty- related barriers to learning. In many contexts local authorities may be able to achieve the best possible outcomes for children and young people by working with a range of bodies – as well as schools – such as:

• parent groups;
• parent councils; and,
• other local authority and public sector services, for example,
  • community learning and development;
  • third sector organisations (including youth work, family learning organisations);
  • other educational sectors; and/or
  • centres of expertise such as universities.
• It is important there is a shared understanding of the community context and the agreed outcomes to be achieved through the collaboration.

Engaging Children and Young People and their Families

Children and young people should be involved at the planning and evaluation of the effectiveness of interventions stages of local approaches and have the opportunity to have their views heard and influence local decision making. This should be inclusive of all children affected by poverty, including those where alternative communication methods may need to be considered and children and young people within ASN provisions and special schools.

As part of the evaluation of the Scottish Attainment Challenge, three thematic evaluation reports were published to provide learning and develop the evidence base on ‘what works and what could be improved, for whom, and in what circumstances’. These reports focus on:

• Families and Communities
• Readiness to Learn
• Engagement in Decision – making/voice (children and young people, families and communities)

LAs may wish to consider the findings in these reports in relation to their use of SEF.

A key way in how to involve Children and young people in the planning process can be found via Education Scotland’s Youth Voice Toolkit. It presents a practical approach to implementing Article 12 of the UNCRC, ensuring that children and young people’s voices are included in decision-making in a meaningful, representative and non-tokenistic way. The toolkit can be applied to any theme or topic, providing consistency in how educators facilitate youth voice within school, community and organisational contexts.

One particular approach that local authorities can consider is participatory budgeting.

Participatory Budgeting (PB) is an innovative and effective mechanism to engage with parents, carers, children and young people, in particular those who face barriers to participation within their learning community. PB directly involves people in budgeting decisions that has a direct impact on improving their lives.It can strengthen pupil voice and provide real experience of democracy in action, resulting in more confident and active young people as citizens. PB offers positive engagement experiences, strengthening the school culture(or beyond) by building positive relationships. PB is a meaningful, practical and tangible way to realise children’s rights to participate in decision making, whilst building an awareness of wider community needs.

Across Scotland, Young Scot support local authorities and community partners to deliver Participatory Budgeting (PB) voting projects. This helps to allocate local resources and ensures that young people can play an active role in local decision-making. It also supports young people to be engaged with their local communities and active citizens.

Young people can vote for local projects using the unique number on their Young Scot National Entitlement Cards (Young Scot NEC) when using the PB voting website. This process ensures that young people can easily participate whilst protecting the integrity of the vote.

Recent research conducted by Young Scot and the Young Scot Equity Panel revealed the main aspects that impact a young person’s readiness to learn. Over two thirds of pupils identified good sleep, supportive teachers and the right attitude as crucial. The full results of this can be found on the Young Scot website and provides local authorities with research informing how young people can best be supported to engage in education.

Child Poverty Action Group Scotland (CPAG) is a third sector organisation currently supported by SAC funding. The Cost of the School Day Voice is a network that CPAG developed to listen to children and young peoples voices in relation to a range of difficulties young people face in attending and engaging at school. 5,394 children and young people took part in the ‘Big Question’ survey sharing their thoughts on school trips, food, what helps them feel ready to learn and their ideas about what should change and local authorities may wish to consider these findings when engaging with their own pupils.