South Lanarkshire schools see 5% of PEF funding for PB

Schools across South Lanarkshire are using the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) as a vehicle to provide children and young people with the opportunity to be involved and help decide where best to spend some of the budget allocated to schools by the council.

Every school receiving Pupil Equity Funding set aside at least 5% of this budget for Participatory Budgeting (PB) which enables children and young people to be actively engaged and involved in the purchase of learning resources.

In 21-22, 81% of schools allocated at least 5% with some allocating more.

PEF is allocated directly to schools to help close the poverty related attainment gap and used in this way can help promote wider democratic involvement of pupils.

In 21-22 SLC schools collectively allocated more than £607,000 to participatory budgeting - approximately 6% of the £9.9million PEF budget.

Lynsey Hamilton, the chair of the council’s Education Resources Committee, said: “I am delighted so many schools are using this funding to target areas that are important to them whilst enabling pupil voice to flourish through participatory budgeting.

It is important for our schools to create opportunities for their communities to have more of a say in what is important to them, as parents, pupils and school staff alike as they strive to improve the learning experiences for all learners.”

To make sure that the funding was used effectively, professional learning sessions for school staff took place to explain the process of PB.

Each school formed a PB group, made up of pupils, parents and staff, which ensured the process was inclusive and participative from the start.

The groups then carried out consultations on a wide range of ideas through various means such as outdoor parent coffee sessions; Google Forms; use of electronic programmes like Jamboard to create post-it note boards of pupil ideas, and paper mind maps of ideas.

Schools then asked everyone to vote using both digital and paper-based systems.

Good practice case studies were also developed and shared across all the participating schools.

A PB video has also been developed, which shows the impact of PB across SLC schools.