The interim report is a key output of the Attainment Scotland Fund Evaluation Strategy 2022-26. It brings together both quantitative and qualitative evidence available to date to provide learning on the implementation and impact of the Attainment Scotland Fund.
The Scottish Attainment Challenge, launched in 2015, aims to close the poverty-related attainment gap between children and young people from the most and least disadvantaged communities. It is supported by the Attainment Scotland Fund (ASF), which prioritises improvements in literacy, numeracy, and health and wellbeing to achieve excellence and equity in education. The Challenge was refreshed in 2022 with a new Mission ‘to use education to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty, focusing on tackling the poverty-related attainment gap and delivering the Scottish Government’s vision of equity and excellence in education’.
Attainment Scotland Funding currently provides:
Evaluation of the Attainment Scotland Fund has been ongoing since 2015. The current evaluation, supported by the Evaluation Strategy for the Attainment Scotland Fund 2022-26, focuses on implementation of the refreshed programme in 2022 and the extent to which progress has been made towards meeting Scottish Attainment Challenge Logic Model outcomes.
This interim report presents analysis of the evidence available to date in order to provide learning on both the implementation and impact of the Fund. The Summative Evaluation report will follow in March 2026.
The key sources for the report includes surveys of local authority Scottish Attainment Challenge Leads in 2024 and 2025, an online school-based staff survey (the ‘School Survey’ in this report) completed by 974 staff in 598 schools between March and May 2025, online interviews with national stakeholders held in 2024, and quantitative analysis of National Improvement Framework (NIF) measures of the poverty-related attainment gap between 2015/16 and 2023/24.