The Scottish Government offered a chance for schools to bid for funding in order to improve literacy, numeracy or health and wellbeing with a view to closing the attainment gap. Rather than bid individually the Biggar Learning Community put in a joint bid which included funding for all of our primary schools to improve attainment and achievement within numeracy and mathematics. We were delighted to be offered the full amount we asked for and to be awarded £86137. This offers us a fantastic opportunity to really make a difference for all of our children.

Within the next few weeks we will assess how our children feel about themselves and school. We will also assess how they are doing in mathematics and numeracy. This will give us a starting point and allow us to measure how much progress they have made over the course of the next year.

All staff, teaching and support, received training on developing children‟s numeracy from Tom Renwick, Maths on Track, on Friday as part of our Staff Development Day. This was well received and all staff were very keen to implement the strategies he had demonstrated. Tom will be returning to Carnwath Primary School on Thursday, 8th September when he will work in each class with all staff and children. This is an excellent opportunity for the children but also for staff to be able to see Tom work with their class and to ask any questions they may have. He will stay on at the end of the day and will then give a parental talk from 6:30pm. I hope as many of you as possible will be able to join us for what will be a very interesting and entertaining event. The aim is to give you strategies that you could use to help your child and also to give you a flavour of what we will be doing in school. We will also be ordering Maths on Track resources to be used in the classroom.

We will also be spending some of the money to provide training for staff in the use of Numicon. This is a resource that we currently use within the infant classes but we feel training will enable us to make even better use of it and will also enable us to use Numicon throughout the school. Again this training will be for all staff. We will also provide a parental training evening but this will probably not be until January or February. Some of our funding will be used to increase our Numicon resources, including buying Numicon home-link resources which will enable the children to use the Numicon at home as well as in school.

Finally, a teacher and two members of support staff will be trained in “Catch Up‟ which is a programme that is used to support children who are struggling with numeracy and mathematics. It aims to help them improve their understanding and thus to improve their attainment.

We hope that increasing staff knowledge and skills with the training we are providing, increasing parental knowledge and skills by offering the two workshops and the provision of better resources will have a positive impact on all of our children both in terms of their enjoyment of maths but also in increased attainment for them. This is a very exciting opportunity!

There will be further information throughout the year as our work progresses. We are excited about the opportunities presented by this funding and look forward to working with the children but also with parents and carers to make a real impact on our children‟s education. We hope that you will be able to join us for the workshops on offer. We also expect to organise an open event later in the session to give you an opportunity to come to school to work with your child and see what they have achieved.