School leavers make progress in literacy and numeracy
High school pupils across North Ayrshire are making progress when it comes to reading, writing and mathematics – and the poverty-related attainment gap is shrinking.
The latest statistics on pupils’ Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL) were presented to Councillors at a recent Cabinet meeting.
The report for 2023-24 covers: an update on local early learning milestones data; ACEL data and school leavers’ data – which is calculated using the national benchmarking tool INSIGHT.
INSIGHT allows school performances to be benchmarked against the national picture as well as the “virtual comparator”, which is made up of similar pupils across Scotland.
Key highlights include:
- The overall achievement level of S3 learners has increased for Third and Fourth levels in both literacy (five per cent) and numeracy (seven per cent) since 2021-22
- For Fourth level literacy and numeracy, the achievement figures are the highest since 2019 – up by 12 per cent and two per cent respectively
- For S3 pupils, the poverty-related attainment gap has reduced by 10 percentage points in Third level Literacy and by 9 percentage points for Third Level Numeracy
- At 60 per cent, the percentage of S5 leavers achieving Level 5 Numeracy is the highest in the last five years and
- 96 per cent of school leavers are going on to higher education, further education, training, voluntary work or employment.
Quote: Many residents are still living in challenging financial times, with the Cost-of-Living crisis taking its toll on families and individuals – and this has had an impact on young people’s decisions about what they do when they leave school. This report shows some powerful and encouraging improvements, and I would like to congratulate our teachers and support staff for helping our children to thrive as they learn.
Quote from: Councillor Shaun Macaulay, Cabinet Member for Education and Young People
The council’s Education team’s priorities include raising attainment – specifically in literacy and numeracy – and closing the attainment gap between our most and least disadvantaged children and young people.
A separate report was presented to Cabinet on the performance of care-experienced young people, who are among the most disadvantaged learners.
This shows that there has been a “modest” narrowing of the attainment gap between these pupils and non-care experienced learners.
It also shows that the proportion of care-experienced learners going on to higher education, further education, training, voluntary work or employment has broadly trended upwards for the last eight years. However, in 2024 this level dropped to 85 per cent from a previous high of 94 per cent.
Cabinet noted the reports, pupils’ achievements and measures being put in place to further improve attainment levels in all schools for all pupils.
Please note: Both reports can be read in full online
Published: 01 July 2025