Early years staff in West Dunbartonshire will be required to provide appropriate sports and physical activities within Early Learning Centres after the leisure trust withdrew its services.

Following a recent consultation, the local authority has decided that ELC staff have the necessary skills to deliver sporting activities in line with the national guidance and Curriculum for Excellence.

While staff are disappointed that the leisure trust programme will no longer run they are confident in delivering sports and physical activity experiences to children. 

Staff believe that they understand very well that gross physical motor skills take a long time, and a lot of practice, to develop.

They already provide a wide range of physical experiences for children, such as, balancing, throwing and catching, crawling, core developments, ball skills, running, jumping, climbing, dancing, skipping, coordination, obstacle courses, sports day events and learning about different sports. 

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Some centres also provided the children with swimming, cycling and yoga.

A report was presented to members of the education committee on Wednesday this week to consider how a sports activity programme could still be developed across the council area.

Councillor David McBride said: “There certainly is a lot of good work done and what I am noting in the report about the national curriculum for excellence is that we are able to do this.

“We are managing within our own skilled staff to meet the national curriculum and are very competent in providing this. This was clearly an additionality that had a funding stream and that funding stream was removed.

“I have every confidence that our early learning staff will be able to take this forward and it is disappointing that we have not got this additionality but it goes through all our education settings.

“I would want to put on record to the staff how well they are doing with this programme going forward.”