THE improvements in performance of Lochgelly High School's almost 700 pupils were underlined to Cowdenbeath Area Committee.

LHS currently has a school role of 682 and depute head, Wendy Petty, proudly told councillors that over the past few years the results produced had been outstanding.

And rector Carol Ann Penrose, said in a prepared report, that 'leadership' was featuring heavily in the school's improvement priorities.

Wendy Petty said: "Over the past few years the school's attainment record has been getting better and better and 'good' from the previous year went to 'great' last year and we are looking forward to the improvement continuing in 2018.

"We have an aspirational attainment strategy which is working well allied to the hard work and commitment of staff."

Ms Petty admitted that LHS shared Beath's recruitment of teachers' shortage problem and it had inevitably produced a few problems but everyone was working hard to ensure that pupils were given every chance to meet their aspirations.

Ms Penrose was unable to attend the meeting, but said in her report: "We will continue, in 2017-18, to focus on building even greater consistency in the quality of learning and teaching in all lessons through planning our learning against the Lochgelly High School Standard, which we developed collaboratively the year before.

"Our work on the Standard ties in directly with our initiative with Osiris, a highly respected national training provider, whose programmes are aimed at developing excellence in teachers.

"We are the first school in Scotland to to work with Osiris on their Outstanding Teacher Intervention and ten staff have already completed module one in this innovative learning initiative.

"Leadership also features heavily in our improvement priorities, both that of young people through increasing opportunities to lead and building a stronger pupil voice, as well as developing the leadership capacity of our staff at all levels."

Ms Petty also touched on positive destinations for pupils and said: "Last year's results showed a really positive trend in Higher Education but clearly we want even more of our pupils going to further education at university level and looking at other elements of school life, last year we had our first pantomime for a time when Aladdin took the stage and it was a success and at Christmas time we had Cinderella and the pupils were stand outs.

"It shows success is coming to our young people through an awful lot of hard work."

She added that communication with pupils' families was something which was a key element and it was a continuous process that was being worked on.

Councillor Alex Campbell said: "It is so encouraging to hear how the pupils at Lochgelly High are developing their talents.

"The item mentioned there about family involvement is definitely a key element as the support of patients for pupils can be a big help to them doing well."

Committee chair, Councillor Linda Erskine, said: "The link with the LHS Primary Cluster is important and it is key that reading and writing skills are at a minimum rating of 10.5 before the children step up to secondary school.

"All in all the story from Lochgelly is a good one and the staff deserve every

commendation for their efforts."