Earlier this week, a key publication for understanding the challenges facing care-experienced young people in Scotland was released by the government. This data is provided separately from (and later than) the rest of the system-level information that the government collects, which means that it focuses entirely on the experiences of those who have been looked after and the impact that it has had on their education.

The figures are awful.

Even in areas where progress is being made, enormous gaps remain between those who do and do not have experience of the care system – and in some areas, things seem to be going backwards.

The situation is much better than it looked a decade ago, but progress is painfully slow and, it seems, stalling.

Whether we look at literacy and numeracy figures, qualification attainment levels, post-school destinations or school exclusions we find that care experienced young people are having to fight against massive, systemic disadvantages. These children have done absolutely nothing wrong (their only crime is being part of perhaps the most vulnerable group in society) but they are clearly being punished all the same.

Young people who have been looked after by the state are far less likely to achieve expected literacy and numeracy levels, far less likely to leave school with even a single National 5 or equivalent, much more likely to leave school in S4 (or earlier), far less likely to go on to higher education, much more likely to be unemployed after school, and massively more likely to have been suspended.

All of which would be bad enough already, but there’s another piece of information that you need in order to really understand what’s going on in Scotland.

All of the information mentioned above was published on Tuesday 27 August by the Scottish Government. The material has its own page on the government website and everything. You can find it here.

What the government didn’t bother to do, however, was tell anyone.

Usually when the Scottish Government publishes education data they also make an announcement on the ‘news’ section of the official website, which is why you can go and read all about the most recent school-leaver follow up destinations, the summary statistics for schools in Scotland, or school leaver attainment data.

There’s plenty of other education stories on there too: £4m in funding for football clubs and activities, a scheme to help tackle gender-based violence, and even a whole paper on why education would be better in an independent Scotland, to give just three examples.

When the government decides a story is big enough to be worth the hassle, they even do media calls – which is why you’ve seen so many variations of the ‘exam results day’ photo with a government minister in the middle and a row of pupils jumping into the air in tightly-choreographed unison. And yes, results day also got its own press release on the website.

And yet, when it’s time to publish the latest data on care-experienced school pupils, the Scottish Government decided that the most appropriate thing to do would be to remain completely silent.

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Were they trying to sneak the data out without anyone noticing?

Maybe they actively decided that this wasn’t an important enough issue to be worth typing up a quick press release?

Or perhaps they just forgot all about it.

Whatever the reason, it raises uncomfortable questions about this government’s priorities.

Back in 2020, after a three-year investigation into Scotland’s so-called care system, the Scottish Government, led by Nicola Sturgeon, made a promise: that care experienced young people would grow up loved, safe and respected. The goal was to ensure that being looked-after by the state would no longer be an enormous barrier blocking off the life chances of young people.

For years we have heard, over and over, that Scotland will ‘keep the promise’. Today, it seems like the Scottish Government doesn’t even want to talk about it.

And that, quite obviously, is a problem.

Fiona Duncan, the government's adviser on The Promise, says that the new statistics provide "really significant" information about the lives of care-experienced children and that she "would have expected Government to comment."

She added: "For Scotland to keep the promise by 2030, Government must acknowledge where progress is and is not being made. 

"But more than that, Government must take the lead on making sure that children and young people get the high-quality education they’re entitled to."

The Scottish Government was asked if someone had simply forgotten to issue a press release about the publication or if a decision had been made to try to get the information out quietly.

Here's the response from their spokesperson:

“In line with our commitment to transparency and openness, these statistics were published on the Scottish Government website as per the normal practice. The Scottish Government was approached for comment and a response was issued on the day of publication.”