Scottish Primary Schools Ranks and League Tables

Based on published data from academic year 2023/24

This website collates primary school information for the whole of Scotland based on the 1989 primary schools included in the performance data was prepared by the Scottish Government (Scot Gov).

Because there are so many primary schools this page provides summary level data and a Local Authority comparison.  More detailed analysis and individual school performance is provided in pages organised by  Local Authority.

On this page:

• Primary school performance evaluation across Scotland as a whole
• Map showing performance bands and catchment areas
• Performance data comparing Local Authorities

On this website:

• Maps showing performance bands and catchment areas for all schools by Local Authority
• Performance ranks and ACEL data for each primary school organised by Local Authority
• Download detailed ACEL data for each Local Authority
• Please follow this link to find links to all the Local Authorities on this website or use the sitemap link (top of right hand panel).

Selected Local Authority Links

• Glasgow City Primary Schools Ranks
• City of Edinburgh Primary Schools Ranks
• Aberdeen City Primary Schools Ranks
• Dundee City Primary Schools Ranks
• links to All Local Authorities Primary Schools Ranks

Background
The Scottish Government (Scot Gov) undertakes assessments of all of Scotland’s publicly funded primary schools based on Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL).  Its purpose is to provide information on each school based on pupils’ performance in numeracy and literacy against the curriculum age standard.  Assessments are carried out in primary1, primary4 and primary 7.  Scot Gov makes the data available on a website where information on each individual school can be accessed, but only one school at a time (see previous link). While this provides information on a school by school basis it does not help when comparing and evaluating schools across a large local authority or the whole of Scotland.

For parents actively seeking a good education for their children selecting the right school is paramount.   For both primary and secondary education access to performance data provides parents an indication of the learning environment within the school, however, it is important to understand that the measures provided summarise pupil attainment and will be dependant on the capabilities of the pupils as well as the teaching standards (see notes).

Scotland Overall Performance

The ACEL data used in this performance analysis (for 2023/24 academic year) provided data on 1972 publicly funded schools.  For the analysis the schools were allocated into 10 bands where band 1 represents the best performing schools with 90% or more of their pupils meeting the target levels for Listening & Talking, Numeracy, Reading and Writing, band 2 represents schools with 80% – 89% or more of their pupils meeting the target and band 10 represents the poorest performing schools 0% – 10% or more of their pupils meeting the target. Note that in 2023/24 no schools were allocate to bands below band 7 and only 13 schools were in bands below band 5. (see analysis this page below ).  For the calculation of percentages in each band the 386 schools that were not graded were ignored from the total and appear on the maps as Group 99.  Table 1 shows the numbers of schools allocated to each band based on ACEL assessment levels for 2022/23.

Table 1

Local Authority Performance

Note

It is important to note that what was measured and thus is presented is data based on pupil performance and not school performance. A number of factors such as the socio-economic status of the catchment area will greatly influence the outcome for a whole school. Factors such as the key skills of pupils at entry point (eg. reading/writing/numeracy), support within the family and attitude to education throughout schooling will have an impact on the attainment levels of pupils. Thus an excellent school within a deprived area may be achieving enhanced educational outcomes for its pupils but by starting from a lower base than a school from a non-deprived area it will appear to be performing less well.  In rural areas, where the school roll in often small, the assessment data is not made public in order to maintain data privacy for small numbers of individuals.

Analysis

Data
Data was obtained via a freedom of information request from Scottish Government Directorate For Learning dept: Education Analytical Services. It is also available school by school from Scottish Schools Data Website.

The most recent data was for school year 2023/24 which is published during 2024

All Analysis
A number of statistics are provided in the ACEL data. Assessments in individual classes P1, P4, P7 plus a combined P1/P4/P7 levels for each of subject: numeracy,  Reading, Writing and Listening & Talking. For individual schools, classes and topics the percentages are provided as bands (eg. 70-80%).

• To provide a combined score for the four subjects each range was converted to its midpoint (eg. for ACEL band 70-80%, the score was converted to 75).
  
• Only the P1/P4/P7 combined scores were used and the total % meeting the level for each of the four subjects (Reading – % Meeting Level, Writing – % Meeting Level and Numeracy – % Meeting Level)
• These were averaged to provide an average score for each school and for each academic year.
• For mapping and comparison purposes the average score was converted into a corresponding band on a scale from 1 to 10 (see table below:

Allocation of schools into Bands
For allocation of schools into Bands, these were allocated on the aggregate total score as follows  aggregate score:

Please note that on the individual local authority pages the schools are grouped into 5 bands for ease of mapping and because the number of schools in each band are much smaller.