AN announcement over the council’s bid for £700,000 to ‘narrow the attainment gap’ for pupils at the town’s three ‘worst performing’ secondary schools is due to be made.

The authority’s education team is striving to close the gap for youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The council has submitted a bid to the Government for around £700,000 which, if successful, will target the town’s three ‘worst performing’ secondary schools ‘requiring improvement’ – University Academy Warrington, Penketh High School and Birchwood Community High School.

An announcement from the Department for Education (DfE) is expected this month.

The borough’s education chiefs said the three ‘requiring improvement’ sites have been included to support their improvement and to enable them to ‘accelerate progress’.

The approach is to focus on ‘maintaining progress’ across primary and secondary schools, as children move from one phase to the next.

This means that each of the three secondary schools, along with a number of ‘feeder’ primary schools, will benefit from the money, if the bid is successful.

A council spokesman added: “Local authorities and teaching schools have the opportunity to bid for funding from the DfE to address known strategic improvement priorities.

“This is known as strategic school improvement funding (SSIF) and the DfE has recently run the third of the bidding rounds.

“In Warrington, we have agreed with our schools to prioritise the focus on transition from primary to secondary schools to ensure that children continue to make expected levels of progress after they move up to secondary school.

“A key issue that also needs to be addressed in Warrington is to identify ways to narrow the attainment gap between children eligible for free school meals and their peers.

“Therefore, the local authority has submitted a SSIF bid with a value of approximately £700,000 on behalf of its schools to deliver a project focused on three separate clusters of a secondary school and its local ‘feeder’ primary schools.

“The project aim will be to develop a model of best practice for primary-secondary transition, including a focus on narrowing the attainment gap.

“The funding will allow us to draw on highly effective school leaders from across Warrington and, if necessary elsewhere, to develop continuous professional development, improving teaching quality and effectiveness of interventions to drive up standards and build capacity to sustain improvement.

“The three secondary schools, which have all agreed to participate, are those with greatest need of support in specific areas, currently.

“If the project is successful, there is the possibility that the local authority will receive funding in future years to roll out to more schools.”