ADR Scotland launch new datasets for research

New datasets focused on the lives of children and young people are now available through the ADR Scotland programme for accredited researchers to access within Scotland’s National Safe Haven, with more on the way over the next few months.  

Data for research into children and young people 

Researchers can now request access to the Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL) dataset, as well as updated versions of the Pupil Census, Attendance and Absences, and Exclusions datasets. These datasets are linkable to each other, and to other datasets within Scotland’s National Safe Haven, such as health and geographical data. 

Children and young people's wellbeing is important for their healthy development and long-term outcomes into adulthood. In Scotland, the National Improvement Framework lays out the importance of placing the human rights and needs of every child and young person at the centre of education. Key areas of focus include closing the attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged children and young people; improvement in skills and sustained, positive school-leaver destinations for all young people. 

More information on these datasets is available in the ADR Scotland Data Catalogue  

Coming soon in 2024/25 

Several further education datasets will be made available by ADR Scotland for data linkage research before the end of 2024/25 
  

• new datasets added to the collection will include the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Growing Up in Scotland (GUS), and Provider Qualifications.    
• updates to existing datasets will include School Leaver Destinations and Attainment, and SQA Qualifications.  

Early next year, Scottish Longitudinal Education Outcomes data will be made available to researchers for the first time, which will be available through application to the Office of National Statistics (ONS). This will be a partial release of Scottish LEO data, focused on the university dataset, with education outcomes available for tax years 2005/06 to 2021/22 on release, and more years of data to be included in future iterations as they become available 

How to request access 

At Research Data Scotland, we're here to help you access secure data in Scotland for research. Find out more on our Data access overview page.  

Our work making data available 

Since April 2023, RDS has been working with the Scottish Government to support the practical data ingest work of the ADR Scotland programme, making datasets like these on children and young people available for research in the public benefit.  

ADR Scotland is transforming how public sector data is curated, accessed and utilised for research that brings public benefit and contributes to insights into policy priorities in Scotland. ADR Scotland (Administrative Data Research Scotland) is a partnership combining specialists in the Scottish Government with the expertise of academic researchers at the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR).