Across Scotland, youth work and school partnerships are effectively collaborating to improve school attendance and engagement in learning – ultimately improving educational outcomes and life chances for children and young people.
YouthLink Scotland has been working alongside Education Scotland to support their focus on attendance and engagement. The resources on this page highlight good practices and approaches for schools and youth work teams working collaboratively to create the right conditions for engagement and learning. They are designed to complement the resources available on Education Scotland’s website.
YouthLink Scotland can provide support to strengthen partnerships to improve attendance through its Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC) national programme. For more information or to discuss how the SAC national programme team can work with you to support collaborative working between youth work and schools in your locality, please contact Marielle Curran mcurran@youthlink.scot or Gill Gracie ggracie@youthlink.scot
Tackling the complex issues surrounding school attendance requires collaborative approaches that place the young person at the centre. This briefing paper outlines where youth work can help schools understand and address barriers to learning, including building readiness to learn and designing a curriculum that enables every child and young person to access joyful learning that equips them to reach their full potential.
Link to the paper, including examples from practice, here.
To inform a focus on partnership working, the SAC national programme team at YouthLink Scotland has been gathering evidence to help clarify the impact that youth work can have on young people’s readiness to learn and their attendance and engagement in different educational settings.
This report provides a snapshot of the difference that youth work can make.
This guide is for SAC Leads, Attainment Advisors, and other colleagues who support schools and local authorities in planning and delivering approaches to improving equity in education and educational experiences and outcomes for young people.
It highlights the role that youth work can play in providing effective support for young people impacted by poverty and other related barriers to learning.
Learn more about the practical ways in which YouthLink Scotland’s SAC national programme can support local authorities to harness the potential of partnerships between youth work and school to support engagement, attendance and the poverty related attainment gap.
To tackle attendance effectively, it is important to understand the issues from the perspectives of young people who are disengaging from school. The SAC National Programme team at YouthLink Scotland has worked collaboratively with LAYC and the Education team at City of Edinburgh Council to develop a rights-based approach that informs partnership working that can better meet the needs of all young people.
This resource describes the approach and the important role that youth workers can play as trusted adults within local communities, helping to ensure young people’s voices are heard. Please get in touch if you would like practical support to adapt this approach in your local authority.
Youth work offers young people a wider range of pathways for learning and achievement than can be offered in the classroom, providing more personalisation, choice and agency in learning and positively impacting on learner engagement and educational outcomes.
This resource offers a ‘how to’ guide to tracking achievement for youth work and school partners. Please get in touch with the SAC national programme team if this is something you would like to trial in your learning community. The accompanying toolkit provides resources and tools to support the steps outlined in the main resource.
Partnership between schools and youth work can support improved outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty, including approaches to improving school attendance and engagement. The resource has been designed and structured to support professional dialogue and collaboration between youth work and school practitioners, as part of ongoing improvement activity. It has been updated for 2024 to support collaborative approaches to improving school attendance.
The Lost in Translation Resource has a set of accompanying slides, and two further companion documents that can be found below.
These case studies demonstrate some of the creative ways in which youth work can work collaboratively with school to successfully address barriers to learning and support engagement and attendance.
For more information about the reports and resources available here, or for practical support with implementation, please contact Marielle Curran or Gill Gracie in the SAC National Programme team.