WIREDGOV

Statistics have been released today on the destinations of 2024-25 school leavers from Scotland’s publicly funded schools nine months after the end of the school year.

Among 2024-25 school leavers, 93.5% were in a positive follow-up destination (including Higher Education, Further Education, Employment, Training, Personal Skills Development and Voluntary Work). This is up from 93.1% last year and is the joint highest figure, alongside 2021-22, on record. Over the longer term the proportion of leavers in a positive follow-up destination has increased from 85.9% in 2009-10.

The increase over the last year has been caused by increases in the proportions of school leavers in Higher Education and Further Education.

• Higher Education remains the most common destination increasing from 38.1% last year to 40.2% for 2024-25 school leavers.
• The proportion in Further Education increased from 21.9% last year to 22.1% in 2024-25 but remains lower than at any point prior to 2020-21.
• Meanwhile, the proportion in Employment decreased from 28.8% last year to 26.5% in 2024-25 and has now dropped below figures seen before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The gap between the proportion of school leavers from the most and least deprived communities in positive follow-up destinations decreased from 8.3 percentage points last year to 7.6 percentage points in 2024-25. Compared to last year the proportion of 2024-25 school leavers from the most deprived areas of Scotland in a positive follow-up destination increased by 1.0 percentage points and by 0.2 percentage points for those from the least deprived areas.

The publication refers to the same cohort of school leavers whose destinations three months after the end of the school year were published in February’s initial destination statistics. The proportion of leavers in a positive follow-up destination is typically one to two percentage points lower than the proportion in a positive initial destination. For 2024-25 leavers there was a difference of 2.2 percentage points from 95.7% at three months to 93.5% at nine months.

Of the 2024-25 school leavers who entered a positive initial destination 95.9% sustained a positive follow-up destination. This varied by destination. For example, 94.1% of school leavers who were in Higher Education three months after the end of the school year were also in Higher Education nine months after the end of the school year. Whilst for Further Education the equivalent figure was 79.4% and for Training it was 46.2%.

Background

Follow-up destinations relate to outcomes approximately nine months after the end of the school year and the figures for the 2024-25 school leaver cohort relate to statuses recorded as at April 2026.

The figures released today were produced by professionally independent statistical staff in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

These statistics are sourced from ‘Summary Statistics for Follow-up Leaver Destinations, no. 8: 2026 edition’. The publication uses the school leaver destination data supplied by Skills Development Scotland (SDS) from the “Opportunities for All” shared dataset.