We are committed to having a sustainable population with an emphasis on retaining and attracting families.  This requires a focus on quality of life and job availability as well as access to childcare and the quality of education on offer. Keeping our children and young people safe is our primary concern and child protection is integral in all our work with children, families and young people.

Our focus is on achieving strong and sustained positive outcomes from Education, ensuring that young people are leaving school with the knowledge and skills that employers are looking for and understand the developing areas of the economy where skills will be in demand – areas such as tourism, Gàidhlig, the green agenda and digitalisation. Our commitments are to:

• Raise ambition, skills and attainment, in particular to address inequalities;
• Ensure early intervention in place to keep our most vulnerable children safe;
• Ensure schools and lifelong learning are at the heart of our communities, with particular emphasis on Gàidhlig, digital skills and new technologies;
• Support children and their families to be healthy and active; and
• Provide high quality childcare facilities that meet the needs of working parents

A Suite of KPIs  was selected to provide a consistent basis for the Comhairle to assess if the outcomes of people in the Western Isles are improving over time and support data-driven decision making. The published 2022/23 data for the majority of the statistics is not yet available due to a lag in the publication of data. For reference, the Official statistics: forthcoming publications provides a 12-month calendar of statistical releases.