Glasgow City Region Education Committee

Glasgow City Region’s Education Committee met this month (April 2018) for the second time. The Committee, chaired by Renfrewshire Council’s Deputy Leader, Cllr Jim Paterson, was pleased to note the strong performance of the region’s schools across a range of different measures.

A report RIC presentation highlighted the particularly strong showing in Curriculum for Excellence attainment, performance in the senior phase and in reducing exclusions when compared to the national and comparator figures.  Strong efforts are continuing to be made in closing the gap in positive destinations for school leavers, with schools across the Glasgow City Region performing almost as well as the national average.  Given the high levels of deprivation across the City Region, the strong performance highlights the work being undertaken by each authority to drive improvement.

The performance data presented to the Committee will help inform the ongoing work of the West Partnership, particularly given its focus in enhancing the existing work being undertaken by each member authority.  Working alongside Education Scotland, the West Partnership will seek to establish targets, based on this initial set of data, ensuring the impact of the Improvement Plan and subsequent actions are measured and reported on to future committee meetings.

The Education partnership brings together the eight constituent authorities of the Glasgow City Region.  Each authority will seek to work together on regional initiatives to bring about improvement, complementing existing local improvement efforts by each authority which will continue to be overseen by local democratic structures.  Early actions being pursued by the partnership include efforts to identify, share and learn from best practice, learning opportunities for education staff across the region and the development of collaborative proposals to ensure the successful and high quality delivery of 1140 hours of statutory childcare by 2020.   

Glasgow City Region’s Education Committee comprises the following member authorities (committee members in brackets):

East Dunbartonshire Council (TBC)

East Renfrewshire Council (Cllr Paul O’Kane)

Glasgow City Council (Cllr Chris Cunningham)

Inverclyde Council (Cllr Jim Clocherty)

North Lanarkshire Council (Cllr Frank McNally)

Renfrewshire Council (Cllr Jim Paterson)

South Lanarkshire Council (Cllr Katy Loudon)

West Dunbartonshire Council (Cllr Karen Conaghan)

The Partnership was established last year as part of the Scottish Government’s aims to bring about educational improvement.

The Committee papers for the April 2018 meeting are available to view online.