West Dunbartonshire councillors to consider changing start and end times of secondary school day

A consultation proposing to change the start and end times of the secondary school day in West Dunbartonshire is expected to launch this week.

The local authority’s education department is looking to accommodate a 33 period week at Clydebank High School, Dumbarton Academy, Our Lady & St, Patrick’s High School, St. Peter the Apostle High School and Vale of Leven Academy.

Plans to alter the start time of each day from 8.50am to 9am will be presented to the education committee this week.

During the consultation period the council will engage with the parent councils of the schools listed above, the parents of the pupils at these schools and the parents of any children expected to attend any affected school within two years.

Pupils at these schools may also be consulted if the council considers them to be of a suitable age and maturity as well as the staff.

As it stands there are seven periods on a Monday and Tuesday with school stopping at 3.50pm and six periods on a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday with the school day finishing at 3pm.

The consultation proposes that an additional period 7 would be added to Wednesday meaning that school would stop at 3.50pm that day instead and give pupils a total of 33 periods a week.

It comes after the SQA qualifications for 2024/25 were released. West Dunbartonshire presented 2,182 candidates for 9,912 qualifications across National 2 – Advanced Higher with 83% of those resulting in a pass grade.

Since last year Advanced Higher qualifications improved by 14.2 percentage points with Higher achievements improving by 3 percentage points.

National 5 and National 4 also improved by 2.6 percentage points and 13.1 percentage points respectively.

The report shows that at National 4 and 5 as well as Advanced Higher levels, West Dunbartonshire outperformed the national average with only the Higher results being slightly below.

The consultations are expected to start on Thursday, September 18 and run until Friday, October 31.