Professor John Robertson OBA

From Summary statistics for follow-up leaver destinations, no. 7: 2025 edition published today:

This statistical publication provides information on the follow-up destinations, nine months after the end of the school year, of 2023-24 school leavers from publicly funded secondary schools in Scotland.

Key points

• 93.1 per cent of 2023-24 school leavers were in a positive follow-up destination. This is an increase from 92.8 per cent in 2022-23.
• The gap between school leavers from the most and least deprived areas of Scotland in positive destinations widened from 7.5 percentage points in 2022-23 to 8.3 percentage points in 2023-24.
• 95.5 per cent of 2023-24 school leavers who were in a positive initial destination were also in a positive follow-up destination.
• 35.5 per cent of those in an ‘other’ initial destination moved into a positive follow-up destination. This varied by initial destination with 48.9 per cent of those who were Unemployed Seeking and 20.4 per cent of those who were Unemployed Not Seeking moving into a positive follow-up destination.
• Employment was the destination school leavers were most likely to remain in between initial and follow-up. Of the 2023-24 school leavers who were in Employment as their initial destination, 94.2 per cent were also in Employment as their follow-up destination. https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-for-follow-up-leaver-destinations-no-7-2025-edition/

*There will no doubt be problems in comparing with England but the latest figures (2022/2023) published in February 2025 for Sustained education, apprenticeship or employment was only 79.6%

https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/16-18-destination-measures/2022-23

*Regardless of details of data collection and classification which may be there, imagine this was the other way round?