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Education and Leisure Services
Home > About Renfrewshire > About the Council > External Audit > Best Value Audit
“Renfrewshire Council has consistently performed well in educational attainment”
The audit focused on education and leisure services as one of our services with a direct role in delivering the Council’s priorities.
Reviewing recent inspections by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE), the audit found that the inspection of the education service as a whole was very positive, with eight out of eleven quality indicators rated as ‘very good’ and three rated as ‘good’. Inspections of individual schools for the two years up to June 2005 have all assessed these schools as either ‘good’ or ‘very good’.
The audit looked at attainment figures for Renfrewshire schools, which measure the number of pupils achieving academic qualifications. Attainment figures for Renfrewshire are very good and the Council has consistently outperformed similar authorities. Figures for 2004/05 show that the Council performs above the national average and is continually improving in 5-14 year olds’ attainment. It is also performing above the national average in SCQF levels 3, 4 and 5 (Standard Grade) and 6 (Higher Grade).
The audit notes that HMIE inspected the Paisley and Johnstone area teams of our Community Learning and Development service and found them to be highly motivated and committed to the delivery of high quality services to local young people and adults.The Council now plans to roll out its ‘learning neighbourhood’ structure across 16 communities in Renfrewshire to promote community learning.
Another of the Council’s guiding principles is social inclusion and we work to ensure all members of local communities can take advantage of learning opportunities. The Council is the only local authority to show a steady and consistent fall in exclusions from school over the past five years, dropping from 501 to 375. This has been brought about by innovative projects such as 'New Directions', a joint initiative with Reid Kerr College which provides places on vocational training courses for S4 pupils who are disengaged from traditional learning.
