This paper examines academic performance at top grades in public examinations relative to the national average between Scottish state secondary schools mainly serving young people residing in remote communities. This examination allows me to explore:

(1) how academic performance in those schools compares to schools serving young people residing in more urban areas and

(2) whether academic performance in schools with significant proportions of learners experiencing socio-economic disadvantages is weaker.

School attainment in Scottish remote areas is lower than that observed in more urban areas (Lasselle & Johnson, 2021; Scottish government, 2021). These patterns are similar to those observed elsewhere in the UK, Europe, Australia or the United States of America (Echazarra and Radinger, 2019; Gagnon, 2022; Schmitt-Wilson and Byun, 2022; Schmitt-Wilson et al., 2018; Tomaszewski et al., 2020). They may explain why youth residing in these remote areas are less likely to progress to higher education.

This paper shows that these patterns characterising remote Scotland need nevertheless to be nuanced when secondary school statistics are considered. On the one hand, schools serving remote communities with similar socio-economic status, i.e. similar proportions of learners experiencing socio-economic disadvantages, may have large discrepancies in academic performance at top grades in public examinations relative to the national average. On the other hand, schools with similar academic performance may have different socio-economic status.

In its conclusion, the paper discusses why this contextualisation of academic performance in terms of learners’ location and schools’ socio-economic status is important for policymakers and communities in Scotland and elsewhere in Europe.

My methodology builds on the methodologies developed by Lasselle and Johnson (2021), Lasselle et al. (2014), Roberts et al. (2021) and Thier et al. (2021). Each school is characterised by three dimensions: its remoteness, its socio-economic status and its academic performance. School statistics are compared and contrasted across these dimensions. Briefly speaking, school remoteness is measured from the percentage of school learners residing in remote rural areas or remote small towns as per the rural-urban classification of the Scottish government. The socio-economic status of the school is determined from the socio-economic disadvantages experienced by its learners, either the percentage of learners registered on free-school meal, or that living in the poorest areas in Scotland as defined by the national socio-economic index of deprivation. The academic performance of a school is measured from the number of its learners achieving top grade in public examinations. In practice, I proceed in two steps. First, I construct three binary indicators capturing each dimension from schools statistics released by the Scottish government. These indicators allow me to classify all schools in various categories. Second, I intersect the three indicators. This allows me to determine how many schools are within each category enabling me to compare and contrast the distribution of secondary schools according to their location, their socio-economic status and their academic performance compared to the national average. The work is data-driven and Scottish-based. However, it can be replicated in many countries with standard rural/urban classification and schools statistics collection including their location. The choice of Scotland as a case study is motivated by three reasons. First, the location spectrum of school location is large. It includes remote island, large remote rural areas in the mainland, town in a remote areas allowing us to distinguish various types of communities. Second, measures of socio-economic deprivation at school level are publicly available. Third, the percentage of school leavers living in remote communities and progressing to HE is well below the national average.

My examination leads to two results. First, remoteness may not always be linked to weaker academic performance. Second, weaker academic performance is not always observed in schools with lower socio-economic status. In summary, my paper highlights the importance to distinguish the various local factors determining school’s academic performance. However, it raises the issue of the role of the communities in access to higher education, in particular remote communities.

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