'Remarkable': This innovative scheme has transformed education in Aberdeenshire

However, one Scottish local authority claims it has found a way to not only close the poverty-related attainment gap but seemingly reverse it.

Aberdeenshire council took the bold step of encouraging all pupils - even academically high performing teenagers - to replace a Higher with a Foundation Apprenticeship (FA).

The results, says Andrew Ritchie of the council’s Developing the Young Workforce team, have been “remarkable”.

Peterhead Academy has traditionally been the council’s lowest attaining school yet its attainment figures have risen by 162 per cent.

“The impact on attainment is really, really significant,” Mr Ritchie said.

Gerry McCluskey, head teacher of Peterhead Academy, said FAs deliver “significant benefits in achievement” for young people at his school.

He said they are “enhancing curriculum relevance, raising attainment, and supporting positive destinations.”

Mr McCluskey added: “As a school our commitment to vocational educational achievement for our pupils is evident in the strong performance across both Level 6 and Level 4/5 FAs.”

In 2024/25, 95.1 per cent of Peterhead pupils undertaking a Level 6 FA achieved the full award, outperforming the Aberdeenshire average of 90.1 per cent.

At Level 4/5, 87.3 per cent of Peterhead pupils achieved the full FA, again exceeding the authority average of 82 per cent.

Peterhead Academy senior leavers who have achieved a Level 6 FA show a 215 per cent increase in their attainment compared to those pupils without an FA award.

There is no discernible attainment gap between young people in Peterhead from the most deprived areas versus the least deprived, among FA achievers.

Mr McCluskey said: “The FA programme supports sustained positive destinations by aligning qualifications and meta-skills identified by local industry learning partners as “must haves” for future employees — and are recognised by colleges and universities.

“At Peterhead Academy, the FA offering has led to improved pupil engagement, attendance, and wider attainment for the pupils enrolled in these courses.

“It is clear that when learning is linked to real-world career-focussed opportunities, it increases in relevance and meaning for our young people, leading not only to positive achievement in the FA itself, but also improvements in attainment in the other SQA courses our pupils study alongside their FA.”

Looking at the FA results in the context of the pupils from the most deprived backgrounds, the deprivation-related attainment gap has reversed.

“Those in the lower deciles are actually outperforming those in the more the least deprived deciles,” Mr Ritchie added.

“But there’s something else going on here.”

That something else is that the stats show Aberdeenshire teenagers from the poorest backgrounds who have come through the FA programme are able to maintain positive destinations.

The statistics show that those from the most deprived backgrounds who had taken an FA course are far more likely to still be in their positive destination two years after leaving school.

At the last available figures, across Scotland, the sustained positive leaver destination rate was 8.3 per cent and for Aberdeenshire it was 12.3 per cent.

For those young people who had taken an FA that figure is 45.9 per cent across the whole cohort and 51.5 per cent for those from the most deprived backgrounds.

Mr Ritchie describes this as “truly remarkable”.

He believes the success comes from young people having a practical experience of where their classroom learning might take them and, crucially, they have a mentor in the work placement to support and guide them.

Aberdeenshire’s curriculum is designed to reflect the local area, considering the economy and the needs of local communities.

This is something Mr Ritchie says the authority had not previously been “aligned to” so a conscious effort had to be made to reshape the curriculum.

The foundation apprenticeship programme, introduced in Scotland in 2015, is designed to give young people industry recognised vocational qualifications.

The FAs on offer were aligned to the regional economic needs and skills shortages projected over the next 30 years.

In the first couple of years of introduction in Aberdeenshire around 65 pupils took an FA but by 2018 the option had nosedived in popularity and only around 30 pupils across the areas’s 17 secondary schools were taking an FA.

Mr Ritchie was tasked with reviewing the system and coming up with a new approach.

He said: “Right from the start I knew we had to have parity of esteem so this is not seen as somehow a lesser qualification so it was about challenging head teachers to timetable these as they would any other Higher or National course.”

Around 60 per cent of the FA programme in Aberdeenshire is delivered through partner service providers such as colleges.

Mr Ritchie added: “Right from the very beginning, this was about equity and equality of opportunity. “This wasn't for a particular type of pupil who was finding the curriculum challenging, this was for everybody.

“And it could be argued that sometimes our most academic pupils are great at passing exams, but not particularly great when it comes to their wider meta skills.”

Headteachers were initially antsy about the change because the swap from a Higher to a FA affected their attainment figures.

Yet they soon came on board. Mr Ritchie said: “The richness of the learning is impressive and what we’re seeing is significant, sustained positive outcomes for young people, schools, employers and communities.”

Mr Ritchie describes the work between schools and local employers as vital, referencing links between secondaries and NHS Grampian and the energy sector as examples.

As the area’s largest employer, Aberdeenshire Council, has struggled to employ enough people into health and social care so that workforce challenge has become a focus of the FA programme.

“We’re also trying to retain as many of our young people up here as we can,” he adds.

Thanks to collaboration with the council, the University of Aberdeen now accepts an FA for entry to its medical school.

A spokesman for the university said any FA will be accepted in lieu of one Higher at A grade unless where a specific Higher is required.

Mr Ritchie points to Scotland being one of the most educated countries in Europe. Getting young people to university “has been asked of us from Blair in ’97 and by successive governments throughout my career,” he said.

But now employers want young people with skills.

The local authority is having to turn pupils away from some courses because they do not have the funding to deliver more places.

Mr Ritchie believes the FA model could easily be offered at scale and should be delivered on a regional basis such as across Grampian as a whole.

“The foundation apprenticeships have been crucial for us,” he adds, “But it’s the missing link across the whole Scottish system.”