Pre-school children in West Dunbartonshire are making strong progress in key learning areas.
A recent report to West Dunbartonshire Council’s educational services committee has highlighted improvements in early years education across the area’s early learning and childcare centres (ELCCs).
The report shows that 60% of children achieved the benchmark in literacy by the end of this June, up 4% from the previous year.
A further 34% are expected to reach the benchmark by the end of Primary One.
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Councillor Clare Steel, convener of educational services, said: “We are fully committed to supporting families and ensuring children get the best possible start to their education.
“I want to thank our dedicated staff at all our centres delivering exciting learning to our youngest residents.
“It is great to see the steady increase across all our pre-school children and the number of children achieving in numeracy and literacy.”
Gains were also reported in other areas of early literacy, including syllable awareness, nursery rhyme recognition and early reading skills.
In numeracy, 39% of children reached the benchmark in June, a 5% rise from 2024 and above the council’s target of 32–36%.
Improvements were also seen in children’s grasp of mathematical concepts such as fractions, decimals, percentages, angles, symmetry and transformations, which rose by 6%.
Understanding of patterns, relationships and shapes also improved by 4%.
Attendance across all council ELCC settings rose by 3.5% to 86.8% compared to the same time last session.
The service has also supported 25 modern apprentices in council-run early learning centres, with 21 achieving a Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ) Level 3 and securing employment within the centres.
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Four modern apprentices are currently working towards their SVQ Level 3.
Councillor John Millar, vice convener of educational services, said: “It is very pleasing to see how committed our employees are in our early learning centres and their hard work to nurture and support children in their learning from a young age is to be commended.
“It is also great to see how the service has supported individuals to retrain in childcare and the number of modern apprenticeships supported in our centres.”
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