Fife schools to benefit from £10m funding

Across the Kingdom, 157 schools will benefit from the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF).

The PEF is is additional funding from the Scottish Government’s £750 million Attainment Scotland Fund, allocated directly to schools and targeted at closing the poverty related attainment gap.

Allocations are based on the number of pupils from P1 to S3 who are eligible and registered for free school meals, using the latest available data. In some instances this means schools may have faced significant reductions in their funding allocation in 2018/19. However, Ministers have decided to cap the reduction that any school will face, so that the 2018/19 funding allocation is no more than 10% less than 2017/18. In these cases, a top up has been added to the schools’ allocations.

The investment is given directly to headteachers, allowing them to spend the funds on local initiatives that will help close the poverty-related attainment gap.

Mid Fife and Glenrothes MSP Jenny Gilruth welcomed the news, saying: “I know from engaging with a number of head teachers on the subject that some innovative thinking is taking place on how this funding is best deployed and I think that can only benefit the children being educated in these schools.”