About EduSCOT
EduSCOT is an independent guide to Scotland’s education system — written specifically for Scotland, not adapted from an English site.
Why we exist
Scotland runs its own education and benefits systems. Curriculum for Excellence, not the National Curriculum. Highers, not A-Levels. SAAS, not Student Finance England. Scottish Child Payment, Best Start Grant and a family benefits package worth £25,000+ more than England’s. All 32 councils running their own calendars, catchments and placing requests.
No independent, consumer-focused website covers this properly. We do.
Who writes EduSCOT
EduSCOT is written by Gary, who built the site after going through the journey it covers himself: electronics at Stow College in Glasgow from 2012, then on to Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Glasgow Caledonian University from 2014 — working out subject choices, applications and student funding first-hand, usually by piecing together answers from a dozen different official websites.
That experience is the reason EduSCOT exists. The route through Scottish education is genuinely different from the rest of the UK — different qualifications, different funding, different deadlines — and most of what you find online is written for England with Scotland bolted on. Every guide here starts from the Scottish system, checked against the primary sources (mygov.scot, gov.scot, SAAS, Qualifications Scotland and the councils themselves).
How we fact-check
Every rate-sensitive article carries a “last fact-checked” date. Every rate, threshold, fee and fixed date the site shows lives in one central figure register, each entry recording the primary source it was checked against and the date that check ran — so a number can’t be right on one page and stale on another. Our annual update cycle:
- April — Scottish benefit rates change, and HMRC’s student-loan repayment thresholds (Plan 4 and the rest) and the England tuition fee cap are uprated for the new tax/academic year. We update all benefits articles, the student-finance guides and both calculators.
- February/March — SAAS publishes new rates. We update the SAAS calculator.
- June/July — Councils publish next year’s holiday dates. We update all 32 holiday pages.
- September — University rankings published. We refresh comparison data.
- Every change — fixed dates (results day, exam diet, deadlines) get a calendar and day-of-week check, and we only stamp a page “verified” once that check has actually run.
Our sister site
We also run MoneySCOT — a sister site covering Scotland-specific personal finance. The two sites cross-link extensively, because family education and family money are intertwined.
Independence
EduSCOT is not affiliated with the Scottish Government, SAAS, any council, or any individual university. Where we link to official sources, we make that explicit. Where we have affiliate relationships (e.g. future links to student bank accounts on MoneySCOT), we disclose them.