Current status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 29 January 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what information it holds on how many children and young people have been placed on part-time timetables in schools in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority area.
The number of pupils that have been recorded with a part-time timetable absence code for 1 or more openings (half-day sessions) in each local authority from 2018-19 is set out in the following table.
Local Authority | 2018-19 | 2020-21 | 2022-23 | 2023-24 |
Aberdeen City | 175 | 245 | 403 | 566 |
Aberdeenshire | 263 | 249 | 522 | 635 |
Angus | 122 | 142 | 229 | 230 |
Argyll and Bute | 46 | 75 | 160 | 191 |
City of Edinburgh | 223 | 527 | 780 | 986 |
Clackmannanshire | 11 | c | 12 | c |
Dumfries and Galloway | 34 | 87 | 241 | 619 |
Dundee City | 46 | 107 | 164 | 139 |
East Ayrshire | 219 | 341 | 572 | 627 |
East Dunbartonshire | 27 | 100 | 102 | 138 |
East Lothian | 122 | 217 | 250 | 189 |
East Renfrewshire | c | 18 | 75 | 156 |
Falkirk | 72 | 133 | 140 | 104 |
Fife | 86 | 94 | 128 | 76 |
Glasgow City | 100 | 215 | 196 | 350 |
Grant Aided | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Highland | 264 | 426 | 556 | 623 |
Inverclyde | 46 | 39 | 76 | 168 |
Midlothian | 177 | 274 | 305 | 442 |
Moray | 86 | 164 | 187 | 186 |
Na h-Eileanan Siar | c | c | 7 | c |
North Ayrshire | 49 | 72 | 74 | 113 |
North Lanarkshire | 148 | 156 | 253 | 410 |
Orkney Islands | 16 | 14 | 36 | 60 |
Perth and Kinross | 102 | 154 | 257 | 377 |
Renfrewshire | 44 | 63 | 106 | 119 |
Scottish Borders | 72 | 113 | 124 | 202 |
Shetland Islands | 13 | 41 | 34 | 47 |
South Ayrshire | 13 | 47 | 58 | 97 |
South Lanarkshire | 84 | 201 | 447 | 389 |
Stirling | 75 | 134 | 148 | 205 |
West Dunbartonshire | 39 | 152 | 160 | 270 |
West Lothian | 288 | 547 | 995 | 1094 |
c = value suppressed to protect against the risk of disclosure of personal information.
Note that information on pupils recorded with a part-time timetable code was not collected centrally by the Scottish Government before the 2018-19 school year. Two new absence codes – part-time timetable (health related) and part-time timetable (exclusion related) – were available for schools to use from the 2018-19 school year. As with any new coding, variation in the use and application of these new absence codes was identified during the quality assurance of the 2018-19 attendance and absence data. There is evidence to suggest that this is still happening, although to a lesser extent.
These part-time timetable absences are part of the ‘other authorised absence’ category for the purposes of reporting in the 2018-19 statistics onwards. The number of absences reported using these new part-time timetable codes was very small so the inclusion of them as ‘other authorised absence’ does not have a large impact on the size or quality of this category.
Furthermore, prior to 2022-23, statistics on school pupil attendance and absence were collected and published biennially. The table above sets out the number of pupils that have been recorded with a part-time timetable absence code for 1 or more openings (i.e. half day) in each school, local authority and school year. However, due to pupils moving schools’ part-way through the school year, some pupils may be double-counted within and across local authorities.