Publication of school attainment data 22 March 2016

Parentzone Scotland, provides parents with a range of information and advice to support their engagement in their child’s education. On 22 March 2016, the Parentzone Scotland website will publish leavers’ destinations and senior phase attainment data, for the 2014/15 school leavers from all publicly funded secondary schools in Scotland. Some of the school-level information is being made available via Parentzone Scotland, in a form which is disclosure controlled in order to protect the privacy of individuals.

We have used the same measures as last year and updated the narrative to help to improve how parents can engage with this data. These changes have been developed as a result of consultation with parents and engagement with our Parentzone Scotland Strategic Stakeholders Group. Membership includes the key teaching unions, ADES, NPFS, SPTC and the network of parental officers (SPION). Data from last year will be archived as we will not start to build trend data and show multiple years until 2017. Data is not helpfully comparable until then due to the phased introduction of new qualifications.

Following interest from users, we will also publish national school-leaver performance data on Parentzone Scotland this year. National data is provided to inform parents and other stakeholders about leavers’ destinations and senior phase attainment in Scotland. To understand how well schools are doing it is necessary to consider the school context and pupil profile. It is not therefore helpful to draw comparisons between individual school’s data and the national data.

The school-level attainment data complements the range of information already available on Parentzone Scotland and from school’s themselves through their websites, handbooks and regular communications with parents. All of these together are designed to help parents better understand education and the work of individual schools and encourage communication between parents and schools.