The proportion of Scottish school leavers in “positive destinations” has increased - but the gap in university attendance between the richest and poorest has widened, official figures show.
Some 93.1 per cent of young people who left school in 2023-24 were in education or employment within nine months, according to statistics released by the Scottish government today.
That figure represents a slight increase from 92.8 per cent the year before.
According to the figures, 28.8 per cent of school leavers were in employment, 21.9 per cent were in college, 2.8 per cent were in training and 0.7 per cent were carrying out voluntary work.
The highest proportion - 38.1 per cent - were at university, up by one percentage point from the previous year.
Disadvantage gap in positive destinations
However, in the most deprived communities, the proportion of school leavers going on to a positive destination fell to the lowest point since 2019-20, sitting at 88.7 per cent, with the gap between the best and the worst-off widening.
There was an 8.3 percentage-point gap in the proportion of young people going on to positive destinations comparing the least deprived areas of Scotland with the most deprived - an increase from 7.0 percentage points in 2021-22 and 7.5 percentage points in 2022-23.
Meanwhile, despite the increase in the proportion of young people going to university, the gap between the richest and poorest attendees widened.
In 2023-24, 24.6 per cent of university attendees were from the 20 per cent of Scotland’s most deprived areas, compared with 59.3 per cent from the least deprived - a gap of 34.7 percentage points.
The year before, the gap sat at 32.5 percentage points.
The highest proportion of those from the most deprived areas - 29.9 per cent - went to further education college, while 27.1 per cent went into work, compared with 12.9 per cent and 22.8 per cent respectively among the most well off.
‘Near-record high’
Education secretary Jenny Gilruth said the overall positive destination figures were “at a near-record high” and the increase in those in higher and further education was “hugely encouraging”.
She acknowledged, however, that there is “more to do” in terms of the positive destinations gap between young people from the most and least deprived communities - although she said this has more than halved since 2009-10.
Pam Duncan-Glancy, Scottish Labour’s education spokesperson, said that almost 10 years ago the SNP made closing the disadvantage-related attainment gap its “defining mission” - but its record on this was “shameful”.
“The poorest pupils are still being failed,” she said.
Willie Rennie, the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ education spokesperson, described the attainment gap as “a betrayal” and said the SNP had failed “to turn warm words into action”.
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