Partnership will combat attainment gap

Pupils at primary schools in the Glasgow City Council area are set to benefit from a new partnership with Edinburgh based enterprise Sumdog.

Primary three, four and seven pupils at Castleton, John Paul II, Toryglen, St Brigid’s, Miller, Croftfoot and King’s Park will be given access to a online games-based learning system. The project is aimed at closing the educational attainment gap in the city.

A specific focus for the partnership will be to raise attainment amongst Glasgow pupils from the most deprived backgrounds and to close the educational attainment gap.

The majority of pupils taking part in the recent Glasgow schools study, which demonstrated the effectiveness of Sumdog in improving attainment in maths and numeracy, attended schools in areas of high deprivation, as measured in the 2012 Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.

Set up in 1994 and headquartered in Edinburgh, over 2.8 million children in 88 different countries now use Sumdog’s online learning system.

The partnership with Glasgow City Council is the first to be concluded by Sumdog with a local authority in Scotland. Bailie Liz Cameron, executive member for children, young people and lifelong learning at Glasgow City Council said:“We were genuinely impressed by the results of the recent study of the use of Sumdog in Glasgow Council schools – particularly since a majority of pupils taking part were from schools located in areas of high deprivation.

“It’s great to see how enthusiastic pupils are about learning using Sumdog.”