West Lothian schools secured an extra £5m to help pupils develop through primary and secondary this year.
Members of the council’s Education Policy Development and Scrutiny Panel heard that the total figure awarded to county schools in Pupil Equity Funding (PEF) topped £5,160,840.
The (PEF) is additional funding allocated directly to schools and targeted at closing the poverty related attainment gap. The money comes from the Scottish Government’s £750m Attainment Scotland Fund.
Headteachers make best use of local data to understand which children and young people would benefit from targeted support, and to monitor and track learners’ progress over time.
Most schools spent PEF funding on specialised programmes which offer targeted intervention on learning including numeracy and literacy.
Health and well-being and other interventions have included 100 staff receiving training in Mental Health First Aid this session with further training planned for a further two school clusters in the summer term.
Six schools have engaged with Family Support Workers through Action for Children and 15 schools have directly recruited their own Family Support Workers.
Seven secondary schools have used PEF to employ a counsellor or counselling services in their schools, with a further two currently looking at procuring this service for session 2019/20.
In addition a number of primary schools have engaged with providers of play, music and Lego therapies or have had staff trained in these disciplines, and alternative therapies such as mindfulness and yoga.
Some of the staffing roles appointed via PEF include 15 Family Support Workers; 136 Pupil Support Workers, many part-time posts; 48 teachers, many part time and 91 teachers taking on additional duties via development posts or additional monies to undertake key PEF related tasks.
