Learning in the Falkirk Area
Whether a school pupil or an adult, the Falkirk area offers fantastic opportunities for learning.
Schools
Falkirk was the first local authority in Scotland to replace all nine of its secondary schools with new builds. This was part of the community schools project to create schools that would have an enhanced role in the community offering facilities and services for the community at large to use. As a result, all secondary pupils in the Falkirk area benefit from being able to attend top notch schools with state of the art facilities.
And primary schools and nurseries haven’t been forgotten! Several of these have benefitted from major extensions and refurbishments to cater for population growth in the area. A replacement Maddiston Primary School and the new Kinnaird Primary School in Larbert have been built and plans are underway for a new denominational school – St Bernadette’s RC Primary School in Stenhousemuir – which is due to open in August 2012.
Pupil attendance in primary is higher than the national average and attendance in secondary equals the national average.
Download a copy of the Standards and Quality in Falkirk Council Schools 2009/10 report (PDF, 1.4MB)|, published July 2011.
Destination of School Leavers
The percentage of school leavers entering Higher Education (31.8%) is slightly below the Scottish level (35.8%) while 21.6% of Falkirk school leavers go on to Further Education, compared to 27.1% for Scotland.
The number of leavers who go on to training (13.1%) is significantly higher than the Scottish level of 5.6%. Those school leavers who are unemployed and are seeking employment or training is slightly higher (10.3%) than the Scottish level (9.5%) which reflects the persistence of higher youth unemployment in the Falkirk area, a problem exacerbated by the economic downturn.
However, the Falkirk Council Employment and Training Unit are working hard to reduce the number of unemployed young people through a range of programmes and are also working with employers to encourage them to support young people with training schemes, work experience placements and so on. They recently won an award from CoSLA (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) for their Backing Falkirk's Future| programme which launched in January 2010 and has so far signed up over 150 employers. You can read more about their work in the Growing Business and Employment |page.
Adult Learning
Learning in the Falkirk area doesn't stop when you leave school. Falkirk Council's Community Education| service has adult learning as a key feature of its work. A range of community-based courses and certificated courses leading to a qualification are available. Many courses are delivered in partnership with others, including Forth Valley College.
Falkirk Football Club also offers opportunities to adult learners through it's Learning Centre| at The Falkirk Stadium. In partnership with Learn Direct, and as an SQA Approved Centre, individuals can learn basic computing skills, access the internet and e-mail, or update their CV as part of the centre's employability courses.
Forth Valley College
We are fortunate to have one of Scotland's top colleges in Falkirk. Forth Valley College| is the 5th largest college in Scotland, with campuses in Falkirk, Clackmannan and Stirling. The Falkirk campus operates as the headquarters for the college and plays a key role in supporting both individuals and businesses with specialist training and contributes to the ease with which local employers can recruit a job-ready workforce.
In April 2010 the college picked up two awards at the "Business to College" awards, being overall winner in the "Impact – Public sector" category and highly commended in the "innovation" category. You can read more about the projects that won these awards on the college website|.
In 2008, the college announced plans to build completely new campuses at Alloa (Clackmannan) and Stirling. As part of this development there is also a small amount of funding to develop a masterplan for the Falkirk site, which will continue to be the college's headquarters and no doubt continue to play a vital role in training the local populace.
It is worth noting that the average student age at Forth Valley College is 33. The range of learning options available means the college caters for adults of all ages as well as school leavers.
Want all the facts and figures on Falkirk? Download our Falkirk as a Location (PDF, 66KB)| document.
You can also visit our Careers in your area page| for information on the main types of employment locally and the skills and qualifications you need for particular jobs.