by Paul Behan

SECONDARY school pupils in West Dunbartonshire are set to benefit from a whopping £2.8 million of funding to improve attainment.

The council has secured the investment from the Scottish Government to fund three projects across the area’s five mainstream secondary schools – St Peter the Apostle High School, Clydebank High School, Vale of Leven Academy, Dumbarton Academy and Our Lady and St Patrick’s High School.

The focus will be on improving attainment, particularly among the most deprived pupils.

It’s understood that the money is from the Scottish Attainment Challenge Fund, which this year made more than £11million available to the local authorities with the highest number of young people living in deprived areas.

The West Dunbartonshire projects include a youth and family engagement hub, nurture classes and skills academies to provide practical experience. The funding will also support extra posts and offer leadership opportunities to experienced staff.

The multi-agency hub will give access to a youth worker or pupil and family support worker.

It will also be used for family learning and support and enable access to other services including counselling and mentoring as well as money, benefits and employment information.

The nurture classes will establish small learning groups to provide targeted lessons in literacy and numeracy for S1 pupils who need additional support.

The skills academies will provide pupils with inspiration and hand-on experience in a range of potential careers such as engineering, hospitality, the arts and digital industries.

It’s also understood the initiatives will be piloted in the coming months and rolled out to all schools at the start of the new session in 2018.

In August 2015, the council received £4m investment from the Scottish Attainment Challenge Fund.

Delivered over four years, the money is funding extra teachers in primary schools across the area, and four new innovative education projects including a family learning hub.

Councillor Michelle McGinty, convener of educational services, said: “As a council, we are committed to closing the attainment gap and ensuring all pupils achieve their potential, regardless of their background.

“Our projects in primary schools are delivering results but evidence shows that the attainment gap widens between primary and secondary and we are determined to address this.

“This funding will strengthen the work which is ongoing in our secondary schools and introduce new initiatives to further support our pupils to attain and achieve.”

Councillor John Mooney, depute convener of educational services, added: “I’m delighted we’ve been able to secure this additional funding which will provide new opportunities and additional support for our secondary school pupils.

“The projects developed by our education staff are going to ensure those who need the support most can access it.”

Deputy First Minister John Swinney said: “Delivering equity and excellence across Scotland’s education system is this government’s defining mission.

“I am firmly committed to substantially closing the gap in the attainment of pupils from our most and least deprived areas during the lifetime of this parliament.

“The funding we are allocating to secondary schools is part of the additional £750m we will make available to support schools to close the attainment gap over the same period.

“It will enable more than a hundred secondary schools to improve literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing through a range of projects devised by the schools themselves.

“This builds on our existing work with hundreds of primary schools to ensure no child or young person in Scotland is held back because of their background.”

West Dunbartonshire Councillor Jim Bollan welcomed the fresh investment but said more “radical” policies need to be introduced in order to not only tackle the attainment gap but poverty levels too.

He said: “With one-in-four local children living in poverty this money, whilst welcome, will not affect this or the social exclusion poverty brings with it as more and more families struggle to make ends meet.

“To underpin investment in the “education attainment gap” we need radical re-distributive policies to really begin to tackle poverty and the ever increasing number of the working poor.”