Scotland Neck Elementary Leadership Academy

Scotland Neck Elementary Leadership Academy is a very small PK–5 school in Scotland Neck, NC, serving about 140 students in the Halifax County Schools district. The school has historically ranked in the bottom of North Carolina elementary schools, but it has shown steady improvement: after bottoming out at the 2nd percentile statewide in 2021-22, it climbed to the 11th percentile (1,323rd out of 1,492 schools) in 2025-26 — its strongest showing in nearly a decade. Nearly all students (97.9%) qualify for free/reduced-price lunch, and chronic absenteeism is high at 43.1%, though for most of the past four years it has been better than the district average.

Despite the overall low performance, there are clear pockets of success. In 2025-26, 52.4% of 3rd graders were proficient in reading, close to the state average of 55.6%. In 2024-25, 64.3% of 5th graders were proficient in science, slightly above the state rate. African American students and low-income students both rank above the school's overall standing; African American students placed in the 33rd percentile statewide in 2025-26, up from the 10th percentile just two years earlier. One notable concern is a large gender gap: female students rank in the 21st percentile statewide while male students have ranked near the very bottom in recent years. Because enrollment is so small, test scores can swing dramatically from year to year as different cohorts move through the grades, so single-year results should be interpreted with caution.

Compared with nearby schools serving similarly high-poverty populations, Scotland Neck sits in the middle of the pack, with average math/reading proficiency around 38% across grades 3–5. That puts it behind Inborden Elementary S.T.E.A.M. Academy (about 49%), a comparable school in the same district, but ahead of Coker-Wimberly Elementary (about 30%), which sits in the 3rd percentile statewide. Inborden ranks at the 25th percentile and has slightly lower chronic absenteeism, suggesting that stronger outcomes are achievable under similar economic conditions. Scotland Neck spends roughly $13,990 per pupil — more than several nearby schools — so the path forward likely lies less in funding levels and more in consistent instruction and attendance improvements.