Christina McKelvie MSP for Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse constituency has welcomed the setting out of ambitions to help young people succeed.

South Lanarkshire and Councils across Scotland have set their own “stretch aims” for children and young peoples’ progress in literacy and numeracy levels, for senior phase qualifications achieved, as well as for the number of young people participating in education, training, or employment.

These stretch aims demonstrate ambitions to work towards achieving the biggest two-year improvement recorded since the introduction of the Scottish Attainment Challenge.

Christina welcomed the support from the Scottish Government’s £1 billion Scottish Attainment Challenge, with £43 million in Strategic Equity Funding allocated to local authorities this year. In total more than £130 million has been distributed to schools so far this year to help close the poverty-related attainment gap.

Commenting Christina said:

"I am delighted to see a strong commitment from both the Scottish Government and Local Government's to tackling the poverty-related attainment gap head-on.

"The Scottish Government is putting it's money where it's mouth is when it comes to supporting the work of our Council's in delivering our shared ambition to give every child the best start in life."