A £12m plan to help Liverpool's struggling schools has been approved.
The council's cabinet approved the Education Improvement Plan, aimed at raising standards in the city's schools, at a meeting on Friday.
It will aim to arrest a decline in exam results and key learning indicators among children in Liverpool and comes as schools continue to face disruption from the pandemic.
Even before Covid hit, schools had been a focus of concern for the council, with Liverpool close to the bottom of results tables nationally across a number of year groups.
GCSE results have been in serious decline over the past five years, with the percentage of pupils achieving five or more GCSEs, including English and Maths, dropping from 48.6% in 2014/15 to 36.1% in 2018/19.
The city is outperformed in those results by a number of similarly large UK cities such as London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Leeds.
According to documents submitted to cabinet, the plan will aim to raise standards over a three year period at a cost of £12m.
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The report says: "To do nothing – or continue as we are – would see Liverpool continue to languish in the bottom quintile for every educational measure; significant financial cost to supporting underperforming schools; considerable loss of assets and recoup of deficit budgets when schools are judged inadequate and subject to a directive academy order; increasing costs to educate Liverpool children outside of Liverpool; and a lost generation of a well-educated and skilled future workforce, vital to the city’s regeneration and economy."
The plan has five priority areas focusing on child health and wellbeing, reading, support for children with special educational needs, teacher recruitment and preparation for employment.
The report adds: "City leaders recognise the unique and significant challenges facing Liverpool schools. The large proportion of pupils, particularly from deprived areas, who fall behind during the earliest stages of development rarely close the gap and struggle to keep up for the rest of their educational lives. Educational outcomes in Liverpool are in the bottom quintile across all key stages.
"This underperformance impacts on children’s learning in many ways but particularly in their ability to read. Children, pupils and students who are unable to catch-up find themselves unprepared for the next stages of their education."
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