Strategic Equity Funding: national operational guidance 2026-2027
Guidance to support local authorities plan how they will most effectively spend their Strategic Equity funding.
Resources
There is a package of national and local support available to assist local authorities in planning how to use their Strategic Equity Funding.
Scottish Attainment Challenge – Self-evaluation resource designed to assist schools and others bring about further improvement at this time of recovery.
Scotland’s Equity Toolkit: supporting recovery and accelerating progress is for all stakeholders who are involved in delivering the Scottish Attainment Challenge. It brings together, in one place, a wealth of guidance, professional learning materials and practice examples focused on key themes and approaches central to achieving the SAC mission. Scotland’s Equity Toolkit.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Toolkit provides an accessible summary of educational research designed to inform discussions on the most effective approaches to improving attainment, with a focus on 5-16 year olds and poverty disadvantage. It contains information on teaching approaches and interventions, summarised in terms of their average impact on attainment, the strength of the evidence supporting them and their cost. It may be useful for education leaders and practitioners to inform decision making on the use of Strategic Equity Funding, raising attainment and improving equity. Many of the strands include challenge questions to help support professional discussions. The toolkit can be used in conjunction with the range of interventions and approaches provided through the framework above to encourage and enhance professional dialogue taking full account of the local context.
Alongside schools and education services, youth work improves the wellbeing, readiness to learn and educational outcomes of children and young people. YouthLink Scotland has a range of collaboration support and resources available as part of their national Scottish Attainment Challenge programme.
Education Scotland
Education Scotland is refocusing its work and the way it works to align with the wider aspirations of educational reform. With its focus on the curriculum, it will continue to promote approaches to improvement, helping educators to achieve equity through the curriculum. As the refocused Education Scotland develops it will provide guidance on the support it can offer to assist local authorities in using Strategic Equity Funding.