Worries have been raised that the attainment gap is widening in West Dunbartonshire as a result of the pandemic.
During last week’s education committee meeting questions were raised about pupil progress and whether the pandemic was affecting young people’s learning.
Councillors were informed that despite a recovery programme and additional funding to help schools recover from the challenges and mitigate impact on achievement, indicative evidence is emerging that attainment has been influenced because of the pandemic.
Although the full pictures is yet to be set out with an education chief saying more information is still to be made available.
A report was presented to committee about the steps taken to prevent this, but concerns were raised by Labour councillor Martin Rooney that some of the information was historic.
West Dunbartonshire Council has been making use of the Scottish Government’s Attainment Challenge funding since 2015.
The allocation, which is more than £2 million for 2021/22, aims to ensure every child and young person has the same opportunity to succeed focusing particularly on closing the poverty related attainment gap.
Julie McGrogan, senior education officer, said: “There is some indicative evidence of some impact emerging but to give you a real factual statement on that just now wouldn’t be fair because a series of assessment processes are taking place during this summer term.
“As reported previously we were committed to not over assessing these young children when they have returned to school having had a disrupted year.
“It was worthy of recognition that the younger children in primary one and two did have more level of impact in terms of disruption - that’s why we have developed the strategy to try and mitigate impact because we recognise there is a risk of that and that’s why we allocated funding to schools to provide additional hours of support.”
West Dunbartonshire Council will continue to look at areas for improvement when it comes to addressing the attainment gap.
An update will be presented to members in due course.
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