Follow Up School Leaver Destinations Survey (Scotland), 1992/93- : ADRN

<p>Abstract copyright ADRN and data collection copyright owner.</p><div class="ExternalClass9688C56FDA374257958A476094ED4476"><div class="ExternalClass6CFC8D8E80B94FC4801781FDD27BA7B3" style="text-align&#58;justify;"><p>The National Statistics School Leaver Destinations Survey collects information on what pupils are doing (their destination) three months after they have left publicly funded schools in Scotland. The Scottish Government has been running the survey since the academic year 1992/93. The main purpose of the data collection is for monitoring, to increase the proportion of school leavers in positive and sustained destinations and to directly inform the More Choices, More Chances policy agenda. The follow up survey of the same pupils is carried out approximately nine months after the pupil has left school to inform the Scottish Government’s National Performance Indicator on young people in positive and sustained destinations. Please note that the Follow Up School Leaver Destinations Survey also contains the data from the previous Initial School Leaver Destinations Survey. Therefore, you should apply for the Follow Up School Leaver Destinations Survey data if they have been released for the year that you are interested in researching.</p><p>The National Statistics School Leaver Destination Survey covers all school leavers in Scottish publicly funded schools (where contactable) except special schools. Destinations of school leavers leaving independent schools are collected by the Scottish Government using a different survey and are not included in this dataset. Finally, school leavers that have moved outside of Scotland are not included in the survey. The survey was first collected in 1992/93, and data are available at an individual pupil level.</p><p>The data collection method for both the initial and follow up survey is as follows. Each year, schools provide information on individual school leavers to their Local Authorities, who then forwarded this information to Careers Scotland. They then contact all school leavers (approximately 60,000) by phone three months (initial survey) and nine months (follow up survey) after they have left school to ask the questions for these surveys. The data are then passed back to the Scottish Government for analysis and publication of results.</p><p>A wide variety of information is collected on each pupil and includes their Scottish Candidate Number, date of birth, gender, home postcode, and destination category. The survey has been collected since 1992/93 but note the follow up survey started in 2006/07. Prior to 1992/1993, the Scottish Government did collect data on school destinations by carrying out similar cohort surveys. The data are collected in March of each year and normally available from June in the same year.</p><p>A school leaver is classed as a young person of school leaving age who left school during or at the end of the school year, where the school year is taken to run from 1 August to 31 July.</p><p>School leavers going onto voluntary work can be identified separately only from 2006/07. Prior to this they have been included with those unemployed and not seeking work. Figures for school leavers entering voluntary work destinations are generally less than 1%.</p><p>For the initial survey, around 5% of school leavers from publicly funded schools in Scotland cannot be contacted because of changes in their circumstances or mistakes in their contact details. For the follow up survey six months later, another 5% cannot be contacted for the same reason.</p><p>In general, the Scottish Government collects a wide variety of educational data covering pupils, preschool children, teachers, schools, and free school meal eligibility. Further details are provided on the Scottish Government Education webpage.</p><p><strong>Research Usage and Linkage</strong></p><p>The National statistics School Leaver Destinations Survey has been used for a wide variety of research purposes including analysing school leaver with unemployment areas, gender with achievement, and trends in positive and negative pupil destinations over time. </p><p>The survey has also been linked with the Scottish Government’s Pupil Census to provide a more in depth picture of pupils in Scotland, including the relationship between free school meals and pupil destinations.</p><p>The National Statistics School Leaver Destination Survey contains the Scottish Candidate number (a unique number allocated to each pupil by the Scottish Qualifications Authority at Primary 1). In theory, this field will allow you to link to the other main Scottish Education datasets including the Pupil Census, Attendance and Absence survey, Exclusion Survey, and also the Scottish Qualification Authority attainment datasets. This dataset cannot be linked to the Free School Meals Survey. Consideration is also being given to linking the Scottish Government Education data with health data using probabilistic matching techniques.</p></div>