SCHOOLCHILDREN who have trouble reading, writing or adding up will be the latest beneficiaries of the Government's education offensive in Scotland.
Donald Dewar will tomorrow announce a big cash boost for a scheme to ensure that every five and six-year-old in the land's basic skills are up to standard.
The Scottish Secretary will announce that at least #25m more is being put into the Early Intervention Programme to assist the youngest primary schoolchildren.
The scheme involves identifying pupils who need help with reading, writing and numeracy as early as possible in their educational career, and then offering practical help. Tomorrow's extra money will more than double the amount spent on early intervention, by both the Government and Scottish councils, since the initiative began last June.
Since then, the #24m start-up funding has been targeted on a minority of schools which have sizeable numbers of pupils who need extra help with their basic skills. This new cash injection will enable early intervention to be extended much more widely.
''The reality is that there are kids in almost every school in Scotland who would benefit from this approach, which has been highly successful,'' explained a Scottish Office source.
This latest money will pay for pupils to receive extra classroom teaching, fund additional staff and hopefully strengthen the links between schools and parents. In many cases parents are ill-equipped to give their sons and daughters the extra teaching at home which would help them catch up.
When he launched the programme last year, Scottish Office Education Minister Brian Wilson described reading, writing and counting as ''the stepping stones for children to learning throughout their school careers''.
The money is the latest of a series of initiatives the Government is taking north of the Border in the crucial electoral battleground of education. The Herald revealed yesterday how thousands of students from poorer backgrounds will be able to study part-time for university degrees, paid for by the Scottish Office, from this autumn.
The intense focus on education, which Tony Blair has listed as the Government's top priority, is part of a Labour strategy to regain the political high-ground in Scotland by concentrating on ''bread and butter issues'' of widespread practical importance.
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