Island pupils’ report card: “Very encouraging”
The number of school leavers in the Western Isles entering direct employment or employment-related training is 14 percentage points above the national average, according to figures presented to Comhairle nan Eilean Siar’s education committee on Tuesday.
The report shows more than 35 per cent of Comhairle school leavers went directly into employment in 2025, compared with a Scottish national figure of 20.7 per cent.
The Western Isles also recorded a 96.2 per cent rate for 16-19-year-olds in education, employment or training overall, the fourth highest in Scotland, above the national average of 93.3 per cent.
During the meeting, Stornoway South councillor Angus McCormack, who has a professional background in education, said the figures were “very encouraging,” adding: “We need our young people to be able to stay here and work here.”
The Comhairle’s chief officer of education, Donald MacLeod, said the figures reflected a deliberate effort to diversify what schools offer pupils.
“That’s a reflection of the education system trying to profile its offer to meet the economic needs of the community, and to try and retain their population here and move away from the sole path being for academic progress and then onwards on to university and losing our young population,” he said.
“That’s still the right and proper path for many, but also we want to diversify the education offer to make sure that it’s retaining young people who do want to stay here and live and learn and work in our local community.”
The report figures also confirmed that pupils in the Western Isles secured a pass rate almost four percentage points above the national average in National 5 exams this year. A total of 622 pupils across four secondary achieved an overall pass rate of just over 81 per cent, matching last year’s figure but from a larger cohort sitting more exams.
Advanced Higher performance saw the sharpest improvement, with a pass rate of almost 80 per cent, more than 14 points higher than last year and more than double the number of awards achieved in 2025, placing the Western Isles fourth among Scotland’s local authorities for Advanced Higher attainment.
Higher passes, however, fell slightly to just over 72 per cent, sitting just over 4 points below the national average.
The report stated that council officers and school staff would carry out further analysis to address the issues behind the dip.
Younger pupils also showed gains, with improvements recorded across most literacy and numeracy milestones in the Broad General Education (BGE) survey covering P1 to S3.
The report flagged a gap in numeracy attainment between pupils receiving free school meals (FSM) and their peers, with a combined P1 to S3 cohort gap of just over 17 percentage points, wider than the equivalent gaps in literacy and English (3.5 points) or Gàidhlig writing (just over 5 points). But the report cautioned that low FSM cohort numbers could disproportionately affect the data, and urged care in drawing comparisons between cohorts.
All schools will take part in a local authority improvement project aimed at raising numeracy attainment, education officers confirmed to the meeting.