'Relentless focus' by Falkirk Council pupils for leaving school

Members of Falkirk Council’s scrutiny committee heard that the latest data for 2025 shows that Falkirk is in the top five of all 32 Scottish councils for pupils moving on to “positive destinations”.

These include employment, further or higher education, training, volunteering, and skills development.

The data, published by the Scottish Government, compares Falkirk Council schools with the picture nationally and with virtual comparator data, which is selected to ensure that any comparisons are fair and meaningful.

Jill Pringle, Falkirk Council’s head of education, told the meeting that the results shows that the service has a “relentless focus” on preparing pupils to face the national economic environment.

“This is a really strong report for us and it has been the result of a lot of hard work from the young people, the parents and the schools involved,” she said.

She stressed that the positive results came from the efforts across the council area from early years and through primary and secondary education to prepare pupils for the future.

In the Falkirk area, 24.22 per cent of leavers in 2025 went into employment, compared with the national average of 21 per cent.

She said: “While we will experience some of the national picture and we are not immune to it, we can mitigate that by preparing pupils.

“We are now very data literate which means we can look longer term at pro-active and longer term interventions.”

With employment prospects changing so rapidly, she said, data is vital to understand what opportunities might be open to young people when they are ready to leave school.

The focus on future employment, she said, has meant the council also working closely with Skills Development Scotland and the Developing the Young Workforce programme, whose staff visit schools to show pupils the opportunities available to them.

Local organisations that are also working with the council to provide young people with relevant experience include the charity Cyrenians, which has a base in Falkirk’s Dollar Park, and environmental charity Sustainable Thinking Scotland, based in Kinneil Estate, Bo’ness.

Schools are also trying hard to provide practical experiences that will help young people get work, such as barista training.

They are also helping young people find a way into new careers including those in green technology by preparing them for college or university courses.

The focus on positive destinations acknowledges that there is “no wrong path” for many pupils who do not do well in traditional academic qualifications but will thrive in jobs or even different forms of education.

Of the 1689 pupils in last year’s group of leavers, 42 had not gone on to a positive destination at the time the report was collated.

Director of education Jon Reid assured councillors that young people will continue to be supported by schools and other agencies if they have not found work or if the course they had chosen does not work out.

The leavers’ report also noted that Falkirk is comparing favourably with others in terms of the number of qualifications that are being gained by young people.

Councillor Iain Sinclair said the report shows that “work, year on year, continues to increase the opportunities and chances that our young people have”.

He praised the work of staff in education as well as the families who work in partnership to allow pupils to “flourish and shine”.

“Behind these statistics are individual young people who continue to improve themselves and continue to astonish me in their capacity and what they can go on to achieve,” he said.