Education Report highlights positive changes for South Ayrshire schools

The Educational Services Standards and Quality Report 2024-25 was approved* at Cabinet on Tuesday 23 September.

The report highlights positive work undertaken across South Ayrshire's schools, progress made by Educational Services over the 2024-2025 school session, and the continued efforts by staff to improve the service.

Key areas of improvement included school attendance and attainment. This year, our attendance in primary schools reached 93.5%, an increase of 0.8% from the 2023-24 session. In our secondary schools, an improvement of 1.7% saw attendance rates increase to 88.3%. This has brought our overall attendance rate to 90.9%.

As part of the strategy to raise attendance, we continued our "Every Learner, Every Day" (ELED) campaign to promote the importance of going to school. This campaign starred some of our very own school pupils to help spread the positive message across a variety of media channels.

In total, ELED campaign materials were viewed a total of 3.7 million times this session, helping to deliver a strong and consistent message about the importance of attending school.

We also improved upon our already impressive figures for school leavers moving on to positive destinations. Figures published by the Scottish Government in February 2025 showed that for 2024, South Ayrshire had risen to 98.7%, an improvement on the previous year, and above the national average of 95.7%.

Figures also showed that the number of leavers attaining five or more awards at SCQF level 3 or better was 94.7% above the national average.

South Ayrshire Council's Acting Director of Education, Scott Mulholland, said: "It's fantastic to be able to spread the word about the achievements of our Educational Services team and highlight positive stories within our schools.

"Important milestones have been reached in terms of attendance and attainment, and we remain ambitious about building on this success in the coming school year."

The report can be found on the South Ayrshire Council website.

*Approval is subject to call ins.