West Lothian High schools have seen significant improvement in exam results for the fifth year in a row.
Pupils in what one councillor called the ‘pandemic generation’ showed results above the Scottish average and comparable schools across Scotland.
The pass rates topped 76% for sixth year pupils, members of the Education Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel heard.
Siobhan McGarty, head of secondary education told councillors: “In each of the measures, performance of West Lothian schools and learners has significantly outperformed both the national average and the virtual comparator.”
Over the five-year period 2020 to 2025, the percentage of S4 learners attaining 5+ awards at SCQF Level 5 has shown improvement. West Lothian was significantly above the National and Virtual Comparator in this measure between 2020 and 2024.
The percentage of pupils achieving five or more awards at SCQF Level 5 has risen from 60% in 2020 to 76% in 2024. Over the same period for the Scottish average the figures remained static at 55%.
In the sixth year the percentage of pupils awarded 5 + Awards at SCQF Level 6 rose from 52% in 2020 to 54% in 2025. This compares to the national average of 38% to 39% in the same years.
The percentage of sixth years achieving 1+ Awards at SCQF Level 6 rose from 73% to 83% between 2020 and 2025 compared to a national static average of 66%.
Heather Hughes, the local EIS rep told the meeting: “These results are testament to the hard work of all staff. It’s not just the teachers currently teaching the young people. We are a team and that team starts even at the early years. It’s fantastic.
“It worries me that we are still pushing to raise attainment further because that has massive workload implications on our staff, but for now just a very big congratulation to all teaching and non-teaching staff and the young people.”
SNP depute group leader Pauline Stafford said: “A huge congratulations to the young people and their teachers for these really great results. Just looking at these years, back to 2019, and what these young people have had to come through and how resilient they have had to be.
“This is the pandemic generation – it is really positive to see these rising pass rates right across Scotland and the closing of the attainment gap just shows the resilience of young people, so congratulations to them.”
Committee chair Councillor Andrew McGuire said: “I would echo that. A huge congratulations to them. I was at West Calder yesterday and talking to two sixth years and the penny hadn’t dropped until I was talking to them about a school camp that West Calder is having this week. They didn’t get to go on that because when they were in the first year the pandemic was on. So that particular cohort of young people who sat their exams this year have been through some of the strangest experiences that we could ever imagine.
“For them to come out with pass rates to have improved is tremendous, and it benefits peoples’ life chances enormously. So we are incredibly proud of everyone. Thanks to all our hard-working staff. I agree with Heather entirely; it’s not a one-year thing. It starts from the moment they set foot in an educational establishment in West Lothian, so I’m very proud that we continue to perform extremely well. Long may it continue.”
By Stuart Sommerville, Local Democracy Reporter
