A NUMBER of primary schools in West Dunbartonshire are set to benefit from a new £289,000 dance education scheme aimed at raising attainment levels.

For national youth dance organisation, YDance, have secured funding to go into primary schools and help unlock children's potential.

The project, called Shake It Up, will be rolled out over a four-year period and more than 2000 primary school children from 12 schools- in areas of deprivation- will benefit.

YDance will receive £298,000 from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to run Shake It Up, which is based on YDance’s experience of the Arts Across the Curriculum programme.

Moira Sinclair, chief executive of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, said: "At Paul Hamlyn Foundation, we want to help people overcome disadvantage and lack of opportunity, so that they can realise their potential and enjoy fulfilling and creative lives, and we believe that access to the arts can be a powerful way of achieving this.

"YDance’s Shake It Up project is going to bring dance into schools, with over 2000 children across Scotland and their teachers exploring dance, movement and learning together, across the curriculum.

"This very much chimes with our values and we are pleased to be supporting this work."

Shake It Up will take place in four local authority areas which are part of the Scottish Government’s Attainment Challenge, and run in conjunction with Challenge Attainment Officers.

Shake It Up will take place in Glasgow and North Lanarkshire (2017-2018), West Dunbartonshire and Clackmannanshire (2019-2020).

In 2015, the Scottish Government launched the Attainment Challenge - a large scale four-year education programme focusing specifically on reducing the attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children.

The Attainment Challenge aims to drive forward improvements in educational outcomes, specifically in the areas of literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing.

For the next four years, two professional dance workers, Jessica Ho and Julieann Crannie, will each work for a day a week in a primary school, using dance to teach a range of academic subjects.

They will work in close partnership with teachers to plan and deliver the programme and involve the whole school in the process in order to maximise the impact of the project.

Recipients of the scheme in West Dunbartonshire will be confirmed at a future date.

A spokesperson added: "As the national dance organisation for children and young people in Scotland and with long experience in this type of work, YDance is well placed to deliver an effective programme which will enable more children to learn through dance and leave a sustainable legacy of teachers with the skills and knowledge to continue to develop this kind of integrated curricular lesson delivery."