Educational attainment for looked-after children in Scotland has fallen in the most recent data, with exclusions and absence rates increasing.
The number of exclusions among looked-after pupils increased in 2022-23 for the first time in over a decade: their exclusion rate is now almost six times higher than the pupil population as a whole.
A Scottish government report notes that school-leaver attainment of at least one qualification at SCQF level 4 - National 4 or equivalent - was at 75.7 per cent for looked-after students, down from 78.3 per cent in 2020-21. Overall, 96 per cent of school leavers in 2022-23 left with at least one qualification at this level.
The report states that looked-after school leavers’ attainment has “increased since 2009-10 at all levels, but dropped slightly in the last year”.
Meanwhile, the attendance rate of looked-after pupils dropped just over three percentage points to 84.4 per cent in 2022-23 (compared to 90.2 per cent for all pupils).
Exclusions rise after long downward trend
There were 97 exclusions per 1,000 looked-after pupils in 2022-23, up from 78 in 2020-21 - although still well below 397 in 2009-10.
The report highlights “a decade-long trend in reduction of the rate of exclusion cases for looked-after children”; the recent increase among this group was “echoed by a similar increase in the exclusions rate for all pupils between 2020-21 and 2022-23”.
The exclusions rate for all pupils was 17 per 1,000 in 2022-23 - up from a low of 12 in 2020-21. In 2009-10, the overall exclusion rate was 45 per 1,000.
The rate of looked-after young people recorded as being in a “positive follow-up destination” (including higher education, further education, employment, training, personal skills development and voluntary work) increased slightly to 71.1 per cent in 2022-23, from 70.4 per cent in 2021-22. The equivalent figure for all school leavers in 2022-23 was 92.8 per cent.
Looked-after children and young people are defined as those in the care of a local authority, including residential care, foster care or being looked after at home.
An estimated 1,054 students who left school in 2022-23 had been looked after at some point in the year, representing 1.9 per cent of all school leavers.
‘Success increasingly determined personal background’
The Scottish Conservatives said the SNP had failed to live up to its promises of narrowing the attainment gap for looked-after children.
Tory deputy education spokesperson Roz McCall said: “Shockingly, young people across Scotland now see their chances of success increasingly determined by their own personal background circumstances and where they live.”
A Scottish government spokesperson said: “Over £60 million has been provided to local authorities through the Care Experienced Children and Young People Fund as part of the Scottish Attainment Challenge, and we are working with Education Scotland and local government to improve the educational outcomes of care-experienced children and young people.”
The government spokesperson said that the attainment gap between care-experienced school leavers and all leavers had, overall, been narrowing since 2009-10.
In the newly published data for 2022-23, the gap has “continued to narrow at the highest levels of achievement”; it has “widened slightly for lower-level qualifications [but] is still half the size it was in 2009-10, and narrower than it was pre-Covid”.
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