Annual Report and Accounts 2025 - 2026: Performance analysis

All nine of Education Scotland’s strategic priorities were identified as progressing well throughout 2025/26. Overall, by the end of 2025/26, the majority of strategic priorities were identified as achieved. Throughout the year, several strategic priorities were under pressure and required agile reallocation of resources to progress and to work towards achieving their objective. Although much progress was made, two key actions, which are foundational to achieving the overarching aims of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle, were identified as at risk of not being achieved by the end of 2025/26. This resulted in a four-week stabilisation plan being put in place to resolve this over Q1 and Q2 2026/27 and to achieve their objectives.

We have identified 10 delivery highlights for the reporting year:

1. Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC) – The programme met its aim of co-creating CIC frameworks alongside practitioners, with over 1500 practitioners being involved throughout 2025/26. The CIC activity regarding all 10 curricular areas and the three curricular contexts progressed well across the year with this practitioner participation. We are committed to the publication of curriculum guidance in Summer 2026.

2. Youth Voice Toolkit – We supported improvement in the way the education system engages with children and young people’s voice through the launch of the Youth Voice Toolkit. Over 290 educators from across the education system attended the launch in August 2025. Since then, the Youth Voice Toolkit landing page was accessed 15,820 times with 7,962 unique users between August 2025 and April 2026. See case study 3 (on page 32) for additional information on impact.

3. Curriculum design professional learning – With the aim of strengthening workforce capacity and confidence in curriculum design, 98 practitioners participated in the national curriculum design programme in 2025/26. There was sustained growth and improvement of the programme throughout the year, with a recall day held to provide continued implementation support. This was attended by 150 practitioners from the six cohorts who have participated.

4.The Into Headship programme – This supports improved school leadership across Scotland. This was unconditionally reaccredited by General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) and will remain in place until 2031. The reaccreditation Panel commendations included; the exceptional expertise of everyone involved in Into Headship, the rich and varied opportunities for participants to share their voice, the strong professional networks that continue to grow from the programme and the significant investment in educational leadership that Into Headship represents. The programme also ensured future school leaders have a good understanding of Gaelic Medium Education. See case study 2 on page 31 for further information on impact.

5. Professional Learning and Leadership – Between September 2025 and March 2026, our professional learning and leadership offer reached 3,500 interactions with educators across the system. Almost 1,200 programme participants completed their professional learning, with 98.8% of respondents reporting they are likely or very likely to implement their learning in practice, an indicator of impact beyond participation.

6. Additional Support Needs (ASN) work – This work strengthens system readiness and workforce capacity in ASN. In partnership with the Scottish Government, we hosted a national ASN Data Summit in November 2025, bringing together cross-sector stakeholders from across Scotland. Building on this, the work is expanding into a series of practitioner events focused on student need categories, national guidance, and the staged intervention model. The ASN Teacher Professional Learning Programme also launched in 2025/26, with 85 teachers in the first cohort completing in November 2026. Co-designed with teachers and grounded in classroom practice, the programme is strengthening professional confidence, system capacity, and national consistency in ASN practice.

7. Attendance programmes –We provided targeted support to local authorities through a series of initiatives, including the Improving Attendance Project, the National Attendance and Engagement Quality Improvement Programme, the Attendance and Engagement Theory of Change, and the Young Scot Improving Attendance and Engagement Equity Resource. These programmes are now complete and have delivered a strong range of positive outputs. Evidence demonstrates that Education Scotland’s Attainment Advisor and wider support had a significant system‑wide impact, enabling schools to move beyond surface‑level data analysis to targeted, evidence‑informed action. This contributed to measurable improvements in attendance for many learners and increased staff confidence and capability to sustain improvement.

8. Public Health Approach to Learning (PHAL) – This is a collaborative system‑leadership initiative in Scotland, jointly led by Education Scotland, Public Health Scotland, Police Scotland and the Scottish Prevention Hub. During 2025/26, PHAL achieved and met the intended milestones. This work further progressed our approach to Public Service Reform (PSR) as it centres on joined up working through data sharing and usage. A comprehensive resourcing options paper was developed to support scaling and rollout strategies and a dedicated evaluation strand will be in position following the first development sites.

9. Introduction of new Advisory Board and Audit and Risk Committee - The recruitment and induction of an Advisory Board and an Audit and Risk Committee for the Refocused Education Scotland was successfully completed over the reporting period 2025/26. This action has ensured Education Scotland has effective governance arrangements in place. This is critical to maintaining public confidence in Education Scotland as a public body and followed a short period when we merged the Advisory Board and Audit and Risk Committee.

Inspection – Inspection activity across the reporting year was strengthened, across the range of settings, ranging from state funded, grant aided and independent schools to Early Learning and Childcare (ELC), from Gaelic Medium and Learner Education to Colleges, from thematic inspection to education oversight inspection. Inspection included joint inspections for prisons and joint inspections of services for children with the Care Inspectorate. As such, inspection activity provided a more consistent assurance of quality and improvement across learner contexts.

The 2025/26 operating context for Education Scotland focused on reform and the separation of Education Scotland and HMIE into two separate organisations, strengthening curriculum design and developing the Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC), improving collaboration with practitioners, against the backdrop of a challenging financial climate and public service reforms.

Moving forward, we will continually review and improve our organisational performance arrangements, bringing together delivery assessment, KPIs and wider research and evaluation. We will test the ongoing relevance of KPIs, to focus on the areas of performance that are directly attributable to us.

There are 6 key messages emerging from the KPIs analysis for 2025-26, summarised as follows:

1. Making continued progress on curriculum improvement: the progress made across Curriculum Improvement has ensured that the CIC work is now live across all curriculum areas, as we deliver our objectives as a curriculum agency.

2. Opportunities to simplify our priorities: combining ‘curriculum’ and ‘learning, teaching and assessment’ in light of CIC work, has allowed for streamlined priorities going forward.

3. The importance of system leadership: the approach to System Leadership to increase accessibility for educators is constantly being evaluated to minimise barriers to access. Professional learning opportunities are delivered through cohort-based approaches as well as online open access professional learning, reflecting the needs of the educators.

4. Meeting the changing needs of the system: professional learning and leadership continues to grow to keep pace with changing needs of the system, as demonstrated by the increase in curriculum focused professional learning. The evidence does highlight that there is still the need for better measurement of the reach and impact of professional learning, through a blend of KPI, research and evaluation options.

5. Meeting the commitment to increasing inspections: 311 planned inspections were completed in the academic year to 31st March 2026.

6. The changes needed to the way we work: as we move through the next stages of reform and Education Scotland and HMIE operate as two separate organisations, it is clear that we need to effectively engage with stakeholders and our function as a curriculum agency is clear.

We have structured and presented the KPI section around our strategic priorities.

System Leadership

Number of engagements with educational establishments, local authorities and regions relating to system leadership, to support effective leadership in complex circumstances
(Source: Programme information)

Proportion of participants involved in professional learning and improvement support opportunities focused on system leadership who report they are likely to implement learning in practice.
(Source: Professional learning evaluation forms)

This KPI had a target set of at least 95% of participants who are involved in professional learning and improvement support opportunities in system leadership will report they are likely to implement their learning in practice. This was not achieved by a narrow margin, and can be attributed to inconsistent reporting processes across the organisation. Measures are being put in place to ensure consistency and to achieve set KPI targets for the forthcoming year.