THE rectors and staff of the area's two secondary schools were praised by councillors when the performance of Beath and Lochgelly High Schools were considered by Cowdenbeath Area Committee.

Beath's Douglas Young and Carol Ann Penrose presented their reports to the committee last midweek and the attainment levels of both schools were good.

Douglas Young said: "At all levels in literacy and numeracy and across our whole cohort we saw results improve, and more significantly, remain above our virtual comparator.

"We are particularly delighted to see a significant change in performance for literacy and numeracy at Level 5 and it is also worth highlighting that the improvement for the most deprived 30 per cent of our pupils remains strong. For this group of pupils we feel we are continuing to close the gap.

"If we look at one or more passes at Level 5 in S4 they have moved from 60 per cent in 2012 to 71 per cent in 2016 although this last figure is an 11 per cemnt drop from the previous session and takes us back a couple of years. This the predicted drop in the quality of results given the cohort we had."

He added: The improvements continue in S5 where the number of pupils gaining one or more passes at Level 6 have gone from 34 per cent in 2012 5 to 53 per cent in 2016.

"We are very clear at Beath that there are no barriers to aspiration , attainment or achievement and this is the message we deliver relentlessly.

"We also use the message from our Malawi partner schools to remind our learners of the opportunities they have, while the barriers placed in front of learners in the African country are absolutely hue in comparison to those faced in Scotland."

Ms Penrose said that in terms of positive destinations for pupils at Lochgelly High there had been a significant improvement in destinations both initial and follow up with 93.3 per cent of our young people entering a positive destination compared to only 85 per cent five years ago.

She added: "A key area of future focus is to continue to build on developing high quality learning and teaching practice of all teachers and further strengthening the necessary to ensure this is deeply embedded and visible consistently in every classroom in every classroom and with every learning experienced across the school and beyond.

"We have launched what we are calling our 'Lochgelly Standard' of learning and teaching and are using this as a framework to benchmark and evaluate our practice, this being supported by cross Faculty visits and professional dialogue alongside a whole school improvement group who lead programme of week long learning and teaching walkthrough visits with each faculty."

The rector stressed that developing the young workforce and skills for learning life and work: "We have introduced a timetabled element for skills for learning life and work form S1 to S6 and are further developing our Employability programmes to support greater coherence and progression in skills and knowledge throughout.

"We are building our employer engagement around these sectors we are building our employer engagement around these sectors and invite our partners in a minumum of six times a year to work with our young people".

Lochs councillor Alex Campbell said: "Getting children into jobs and further education is what is being tackled our two schools and this is something which has been improving all the time and it is of credit to the staff and pupils at both Beath and Lochgelly Highs."

Fellow Lochs member Mary Lockhart said: "The talent of the pupils at Lochgelly Hugh is amazing.

"I was at the Christmas panto at LHS and it was simply a fantastic show.

"Both schools are doing magnificent work and achieving success with a l;ot of challenging factors being in front of them."

Lochgelly and Cardenden Councillor Linda Erskine said: "The staff at our schools are getting the best out of the pupils and that is quite inspirational and the talents of the pupils are being superbly developed."

Committee chairman Mark Hood added: "The Employability factor developed at Lochgelly has been something which has been recognised both here in Fife and outside and it has been an inspiration."