Statistical News Release

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Attainment and qualifications in Scotland 2007-08

10/03/2009

Scotland's Chief Statistician today published a range of statistics relating to the post-appeal attainment of pupils and leavers from Scottish schools. The statistics relate to the August 2008 exam diet and update the pre-appeal figures published in September.

The main findings are:

  • Attainment by the end of stages 4, 5 and 6 has remained stable in recent years. Attainment is greater for females than males in all stages and in all categories
  • Pupils who live in the most deprived areas had lower average tariff scores (121) than those from the least deprived areas (227)
  • Chinese (219), Indian (198) and mixed race (190) pupils in S4 attained the highest average tariff scores over the last three years
  • At least one pass at SCQF Level 7 was obtained by 13 per cent of leavers, slightly up on the figure of 11.8 per cent in 2006-07, while 3.5 per cent of leavers obtained no awards at SCQF Level 3 or better, down from 4.1 per cent in 2006-07
  • 9.3 per cent of school leavers from the most deprived areas attained no awards at SCQF level 3 or above, compared to 0.9 per cent from the least deprived. 6.1 per cent of leavers from the most deprived backgrounds have at least one award at SCQF 7, compared to nearly 30 per cent of those from the least deprived areas
  • 93.7 per cent of leavers attained English at SCQF Levels 3-5 and 93.5 per cent attained these levels in Maths. At SCQF Level 6, 25.8 per cent attained this level and 19 per cent did so for Maths, while at SCQF Level 7 the figures were 1.7 per cent for English and 3 per cent for Maths
  • 49.6 per cent of leavers from publicly funded secondary and special schools with additional support needs (ASN) had 5 or more qualifications at SCQF level 3 or above, compared to 91.7 per cent of those without ASN. 25.3 per cent of those with ASN had no qualifications at SCQF level 3 or above compared to 3 per cent of the rest, while just under 8 per cent had at least one qualification at SCQF level 6 or above, compared to nearly 46 percent of those with no ASN

National statistics are produced by professionally independent statistical staff.

Page updated: Wednesday, March 11, 2009