The learner journey from school to work

Educating people and equipping them with relevant skills is essential in improving their life experiences and helping them to fulfil their potential and gain employment, in turn supporting Scotland’s economic growth.

Audit Scotland looks at how public money is spent on education and skills and what difference it is making to deliver better outcomes for citizens.

This hub sets out information from our work on school education, further and higher education, and skills and training. You can find more information on our work on early learning and childcare on our Childcare in Scotland hub. You can find out more about our planned audit work here.

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Key facts

Spending

  • £5.5 billion Spend on school education (2020/21) 27.8% of Local Government spend
  • £750.4 million Total funding for colleges (2022/23) Revenue £675.7 million Capital £74.7 million
  • £1.14 billion Total funding for universities (2022/23) Revenue £789.2 million Capital £348 million

Provision of Modern Apprenticeships

  • 38,274 Modern Apprentices in training (as at 31 Dec 2021)
    1. Age 16-19 18,940 (49.5%)
    2. Age 20-24 7,539 (19.7%)
    3. Age 25+ 11,795 (30.8%)

Proportion of learners moving into a positive destination*

  • 95.5% School pupils moving into a positive destination (2020/21)
  • 84.4% College students moving into a positive destination (2019/20)
  • 88% University students moving into a positive destination (2018/19)

*employment, training or further study

Publications

Data and exhibits

The following exhibits show variation in performance, taken from the Improving outcomes for young people through school education report.

Exhibit 3

National and local performance against a range of indicators in latest year available and change over time

Download background data for Exhibit 3 - XLS 41Kb

Exhibit 3a: All indicators show improvement at a national level, although there are large variations in local performance 
Exhibit 3b: All indicators show improvement at a national level, although there are large variations in local performance 

Exhibit 4

Gap between most deprived and least deprived pupils in percentage of school leavers achieving five or more awards at level 5 2018/19

Download background data for Exhibit 4 - XLS 36Kb

Exhibit 4: The gap between SIMD Quintile 5 (least deprived) and SIMD Quintile 1 (most deprived) is evident at a local level, with some councils reporting much bigger gaps than others.

Exhibit 5

Spending on school education in real terms 2013/14 – 2018/19

Download background data for Exhibit 5 - XLS 33Kb

Exhibit 5: Council spending on school education has increased slightly in real terms when ASF money allocated to councils and schools is excluded.

Exhibit D

Change in gap between most deprived and least deprived pupils in percentage of school leavers achieving five or more awards at level five, 2014/15 - 2018/19

The gap between SIMD Quintile 5 (least deprived) and SIMD Quintile 1 (most deprived) has narrowed in most councils although it has increased by ten.

Data Visualisation

This supplementary output presents Scotland's colleges' financial position and student demographics and outcomes information for 2020-21 (the academic year ending 31 July 2021).

For more details on incorporated colleges and college regional structures, please refer to our Scotland's colleges 2022 report.

Resources

Scottish Parliament

School education

Colleges and universities

Skills and training

Get in touch

Tricia Meldrum, Senior Manager
TMeldrum@audit-scotland.gov.uk

Rebecca Seidel, Senior Manager
RSeidel@audit-scotland.gov.uk