Impact of Attainment Scotland Funding (ASF) on Numeracy and Mathematics 2022-25: Background
The Scottish Government’s (SG) refreshed mission for the Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC), published in March 2022, is ‘to use education to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty with a focus on tackling the poverty-related attainment gap to deliver on the vision of equity and excellence in education’.
Attainment Scotland Funding (ASF) has been available to all local authorities and schools over the last three years to fund this mission. The different funding streams available are as follows:
- Strategic Equity Funding (SEF) has been available to all local authorities from 2022 to 2026. £43 million has been shared by all 32 local authorities to invest in approaches to achieving the mission of the Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC). The fund has been distributed based on Children in Low Income Families data for the 2019/20 financial year.
- Pupil Equity Funding (PEF), available to almost all schools in Scotland from 2022 to 2026. PEF is additional funding allocated directly to schools and targeted at closing the poverty-related attainment gap. It is allocated to schools based on the estimated number of children and young people in P1-S3 registered for free school meals (FSM).
- Care Experienced Children and Young People (CECYP) funding, available to all local authorities from 2022 to 2026. CECYP funding is a targeted resource provided to local authorities to support care experienced children and young people from birth to the age of 26. The funding aims to improve the educational outcomes and experiences for care experienced children and young people, supported by the strategic goals of The Promise and the Scottish Attainment Challenge. Funding is provided annually to support care experienced children and young people at a figure of £1,225 per looked after child aged 5-15, as outlined in the Children’s Social Work Statistics Scotland, 2021/22.
The SAC programme is evaluated through the ASF Evaluation, which is underpinned by the SAC logic model. The outcomes within the SAC Logic Model describe the transformational changes needed in systems, cultures and practices across Scottish education in order to make the differences necessary to achieve the longer-term strategy of the SAC. They provide the information on the step changes that will lead to achieving equity for every child in Scotland.
