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Destination of leavers from schools 2007-08
10/12/2008
Scotland's Chief Statistician today published a range of statistics relating to the destinations of leavers from Scottish schools.
The statistics relate to the destinations in September 2008 of young people who left school during the 2007-08 academic year.
The main findings are:
- The proportion of school leavers entering positive destinations has remained constant at just under 87 per cent in 2007-08; positive destinations comprise higher education, further education, employment, voluntary work or training
- The proportion of young people entering further or higher education has risen from just under 53 per cent in 2006/07 to just under 56 per cent in 2007-08
- The proportion of leavers entering employment has decreased by 3 percentage points to just over 25 per cent in 2007-08
- The proportion who are unemployed and seeking employment or training has remained relatively stable at around 11 per cent over the last three years
- The proportion who are unemployed and not seeking employment or training has increased by 0.3 of a percentage point to one and a half per cent in 2007-08
- Additional analysis by pupil characteristic shows that school leavers from more deprived areas are less likely to enter positive destinations and leavers who stay on past the legal minimum leaving age are more likely to enter positive destinations
For the last two years it has been possible to separately identify leavers who enter voluntary work. These used to be included in the the 'unemployed and not seeking' category, but as these school leavers are included in positive destinations in the definition used for National Indicator 10 they are now shown separately. This may affect comparisons over time, although numbers are very small (0.2 per cent of leavers in 2007-08).