FAMILY trips to museums, extra teachers and literacy and numeracy coaching have emerged as some of the strategies to be used by councils to help close the school attainment gap.
The schemes have been drawn up by local authorities after First Minister Nicola Sturgeon unveiled a £100 million fund in February with Glasgow, Dundee, Inverclyde, West Dunbartonshire, North Ayrshire, Clackmannanshire and North Lanarkshire the first to benefit.
Under the scheme, Glasgow City Council is to employ 90 extra teachers and is looking for language experts to engage with hard-to-reach communities such as Romanians. Families will be encouraged to visits schools with fun activities such as cake decorating before being asked about what help they would like with literacy.
The council is also looking at how to improve engagement between parents and pupils by organising out of school events for families to attractions such as museums.
North Ayrshire has unveiled plans to recruit local people as volunteers to deliver parental workshops and to support families who are disengaged with their children's learning.
West Dunbartonshire is to spend some of the money improving parental numeracy while the investment in Inverclyde will drive a range of new measures to improve learning and attainment focussing on numeracy and literacy, working with parents and reducing exclusions.
And North Lanarkshire intends to invest in greater use of testing to inform teachers where pupils may be struggling.
Unveiling Inverclyde's plans, Angela Constance, the Education Secretary, said: "We need to do more to support disadvantaged pupils, too many of whom struggle and continue to fall behind their peers in primary school. That’s why our new Scottish Attainment Challenge is so important.
“In each of the seven local authorities, the Scottish Attainment Challenge will build on the good work already underway in schools, with additional dedicated support from Attainment Advisors and a National Improvement Hub that will provide access to the best evidence and research on raising attainment."
The four-year-long initiative will distribute £20m in the current financial year, with the money focused on improving health and wellbeing in primary schools, as well as increasing literacy and numeracy levels.
The fund will support the new Scottish Attainment Challenge - which is based on a scheme in London which has boosted school performance in the UK capital, as well as similar initiatives from across the globe.
Each school or cluster of schools could see its own bespoke improvement plant drawn up, with work also to be done to measure the impact of the scheme.
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