Follow-up Survey of School Leavers Destinations
Background
Information on the latest known destination of school leavers in September each year is supplied to the Scottish Government by Careers Scotland (CS). This is referred to as the school leaver's 'initial destination' roughly 3 months after they left school (although some may have been Christmas leavers thus representing a longer follow up period). In 2006/07 this data was supplied at individual pupil level for the first time, allowing it to be matched to information from the September 2006 Pupil Census (further information on this process can be found at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/12/07093501/0). This meant that we were able to provide much more detailed analysis of the characteristics influencing different destinations.
During March and April 2008, Careers Scotland contacted the 2006/07 cohort of leavers from publicly funded schools to update their destination from the initial survey. The results will be used to monitor the national indicator on increasing the proportion of school leavers in sustained positive destinations. This paper sets out the process through which the final estimate for the national indicator was derived.
National Indicator Estimate
Creating the dataset
The following table outlines the steps taken to arrive at the final dataset for deriving the national indicator estimate. Firstly, dataset provided by CS was matched to pupil census characteristics using the same methodology as for the initial survey (link provided above). Then, since the estimate is based on leavers from publicly funded and grant aided secondary schools, all leavers from other types of school (e.g. special schools) were excluded. Similarly school leavers who move outwith Scotland are not included in the results.
In the follow up survey, those leavers whose destination was recorded as school pupil have not been included in the results. The surveys are intended to focus on school leavers, those young people of school leaving age who left school during or at the end of the school year (which is taken to run from 1 August to 31 July). In practice, many young people do not decide whether or not to leave school until after they've received the results of external examinations, have tried to get a job or achieve entry to further or higher education or training. For many pupils, therefore, it is only possible to identify at a later date whether they have effectively left school by 31 July. Where the follow up has established that pupils originally thought to be school leavers are now back in school it is therefore sensible to exclude them from the analysis.
| Follow-up Survey |
No. of leavers on data set supplied by CS | 58,762 |
No. leavers not in valid schools (i.e. not in publicly funded secondaries) | 959 |
No. of leavers following removal of invalid schools | 57,803 |
No. of leavers whose initial destination was 'moved outwith Scotland' | 443 |
No. of leavers following removal of those with initial destination of 'moved outwith Scotland' | 57,360 |
No. of leavers with initial CS detailed destination missing | 4 |
No.of leavers available for analysis in table 3 | 57,356 |
No. of leavers whose follow-up destination was 'moved outwith Scotland' | 143 |
No. of leavers whose follow-up destination was deceased | 12 |
No. of leavers whose follow-up destination was school pupil | 64 |
No. of leavers following removal of those with 'deceased' or 'school pupil' follow up destinations | 57,137 |
Imputation for non-follow-up
In the initial survey, Careers Scotland was able to establish the destinations of 98.6% of school leavers and those results were published with the remaining 1.4% stated as 'Unknown'. It was not possible for Careers Scotland to achieve such a high response rate for the follow-up survey in March and April but the response rate was still high at 91.1% of the cases eligible for analysis. Given the higher level of non-response, it was decided that the missing follow-up destinations should be imputed if analysis suggested that certain groups may be under-represented by only considering cases where a follow-up destination is available.
The cases without a valid follow-up destination in the dataset of cases eligible for analysis were of three types as shown in the table below:
Individual not followed up and initial destination was known | 4,663 |
individual followed up but follow-up destination was 'Unknown' and initial destination was known | 83 |
Both follow up and initial destination unknown (i.e. unknown in both surveys) | 329 |
Analysis of those cases without a follow-up destination identified that leavers who, in the initial survey, were 'employed without training', 'economically inactive', 'unemployed' or had an 'unknown' destination as well as leavers who left at the end of S5, those with an ethnic background of non-white or unknown, registered for free school meals, with looked after status or live in a data zone with SIMD ranking less than 20% may be under-represented. (The table below illustrates the rate of follow-up for each initial destination). Imputation was therefore felt to be appropriate.
| No follow-up | Follow-up | All |
| Leavers | % | Leavers | % | Leavers | % |
Employment | 1,767 | 34.8 | 14,439 | 27.7 | 16,206 | 28.4 |
Further Education | 712 | 14.0 | 12,592 | 24.2 | 13,304 | 23.3 |
Higher Education | 1,362 | 26.9 | 15,618 | 30.0 | 16,980 | 29.7 |
Training | 177 | 3.5 | 2,743 | 5.3 | 2,920 | 5.1 |
Unemployed Not Seeking | 142 | 2.8 | 692 | 1.3 | 834 | 1.5 |
Unemployed Seeking | 586 | 11.5 | 5,550 | 10.7 | 6,136 | 10.7 |
Unknown | 329 | 6.5 | 428 | 0.8 | 757 | 1.3 |
All | 5,075 | 100.0 | 52,062 | 100.0 | 57,137 | 100 |
Given the small number of looked after and non-white or unknown ethnic background leavers, it was agreed that the most suitable set of characteristics to focus on for imputation groups was:
· Initial destination
· Stage left school
· Registered for free school meals
· SIMD ranking recoded to <20% and >20%.
As the percentage of known destinations was very high, it was decided that a simple imputation method would provide a sufficient adjustment to improve the representativeness of the results. However, where the initial destination was also unknown, analysts decided that there was insufficient information to impute a destination category. These cases were treated as having non-positive follow-up destinations in tables 1 and 3 of the publication to be consistent with the treatment of unknowns in the analysis of the initial destinations. They are identified separately in table 2.
Where the initial destination was known, analysts split the respondents and non-respondents into groups by their initial destination. Then, within each destination group, respondents and non-respondents were split into groups using the pupil census characteristics described above. This made it possible to determine the distribution of follow-up destinations of respondents within each group and randomly allocate follow-up destinations to non-respondents with the same characteristics in the same proportions.
Effects of imputation
The effects of this imputation are shown in the following tables which provide the final published data together with the comparable tables if imputation had not been carried out and only the known follow-up destinations had been analysed.
Table 1 (as published - with imputation)
Positive destinations | 87.0% |
Other destinations | 13.0% |
Number of leavers | 57,137 |
Table 1 (known destinations only)
Positive destinations | 87.7% |
Other destinations | 12.3% |
Number of leavers | 52,062 |
Table 2 (as published - with imputation)
Destination | |
Full-time Higher Education | 27.9% |
Full-time Further Education | 20.0% |
Training | 4.4% |
Employment | 34.4% |
Unemployed and Seeking Employment or Training | 10.6% |
Unemployed Not Seeking Employment or Training | 2.2% |
Destination Unknown (both surveys)3 | 0.6% |
Number of leavers | 57,137 |
Table 2 (known destinations only)
Destination | |
Full-time Higher Education | 28.1% |
Full-time Further Education | 20.7% |
Training | 4.4% |
Employment | 34.1% |
Unemployed and Seeking Employment or Training | 10.5% |
Unemployed Not Seeking Employment or Training | 2.1% |
Number of leavers | 52,062 |
Table 3 (as published - with imputation)
Initial (September) Destinations | Follow-up (March/April) Destinations |
Positive | Other | Not Applicable |
Positive | 80.3% | 6.1% | 0.2% |
Other | 6.4% | 6.8% | 0.2% |
Number of leavers | 57,356 |
Table 3 (known follow-up destinations only)
Initial (September) Destinations | Follow-up (March/April) Destinations |
Positive | Other | Not Applicable |
Positive | 81.0% | 6.1% | 0.2% |
Other | 6.4% | 6.1% | 0.2% |
Number of leavers | 52,281 |
This comparison indicates that the imputation of follow-up destinations has had a relatively small effect on the results of the survey. It can be seen from table 2 that the imputation has produced a small increase in the destination categories which the comparison of those followed up and those not followed up suggested may have been under-represented in those followed up, i.e. the employed and unemployed categories.
Tables of the distributions of follow-up destinations by initial destination for imputed cases and non-imputed cases are given below.
| Imputed follow-up destination |
HE | Employment | Unemp. Seeking | FE | Training | Unemp. Not Seeking | All |
Initial destination | % | % | % | % | % | % | % |
Higher Education | 91.2 | 5.7 | 1.5 | 1.3 | 0.0 | 0.3 | 100.0 |
Employment | 0.7 | 84.6 | 9.6 | 1.8 | 2.1 | 1.2 | 100.0 |
Training | 0.0 | 34.5 | 26.0 | 2.8 | 35.6 | 1.1 | 100.0 |
Further Education | 1.1 | 9.4 | 7.2 | 78.8 | 2.7 | 0.8 | 100.0 |
Unemp. Seeking | 0.5 | 32.1 | 44.4 | 4.8 | 12.8 | 5.5 | 100.0 |
Unemp. Not Seeking | 1.4 | 14.1 | 14.1 | 3.5 | 4.9 | 62.0 | 100.0 |
All | 26.7 | 40.2 | 11.9 | 13.7 | 4.3 | 3.2 | 100.0 |
| Non-imputed follow-up destination |
HE | Employment | Unknown | Unemp. Seeking | FE | Training | Unemp. Not Seeking | All |
Initial destination | % | % | % | % | % | % | % | % |
Higher Education | 91.3 | 5.7 | 0.0 | 1.3 | 1.2 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 100.0 |
Employment | 0.8 | 87.3 | 0.0 | 7.4 | 1.5 | 2.1 | 1.0 | 100.0 |
Unknown | 4.6 | 19.3 | 43.5 | 18.2 | 8.1 | 4.0 | 2.4 | 100.0 |
Training | 0.1 | 32.1 | 0.0 | 27.3 | 3.9 | 34.2 | 2.4 | 100.0 |
Further Education | 1.5 | 9.7 | 0.0 | 6.8 | 78.8 | 2.4 | 0.7 | 100.0 |
Unemp. Seeking | 0.7 | 34.3 | 0.0 | 42.6 | 4.8 | 12.2 | 5.4 | 100.0 |
Unemp. Not Seeking | 1.4 | 16.8 | 0.0 | 14.9 | 4.2 | 3.6 | 59.1 | 100.0 |
All | 28.0 | 33.9 | 0.6 | 10.5 | 20.6 | 4.4 | 2.1 | 100.0 |
We are confident that, by adjusting the data to be more representative of the overall cohort, this imputation has improved the quality of our estimate of the proportion of school leavers in positive and sustained destinations. If you have any comments or questions about the imputation method used in this survey, please contact labour-market.statistics@scotland.gsi.gov.uk.