Situated in the peripheral Whitfield housing scheme in Dundee, an area of multi-deprivation, Braeview Academy has a school roll of 805 pupils with 440 on a clothing grant. It is not a school with problems to seek.

The disarming honesty of headteacher Alan Wilson is impressive when you first enter Braeview.

“We are an under-attaining school but are making progress on positive behaviour and attendance. We have a new homework policy and for the last four years have been operating catch-up supervised sessions for poor attenders with parental support.”

But the major strategy to improve ethos and attainment at the school has been the development of an alternative curriculum for secondary 1-4 pupils.

For the last eight years the school has been offering a mixture of Standard grades and access courses for some 30-40 pupils, through which good attendance, behaviour and results can guarantee pupils a place at Abertay University, Dundee.

Access courses are of crucial importance to a school like Braeview where three years ago 25 per cent of students were doing no more than four or five Standard grades.

But the school decided that even this was inadequate because it failed to address problems in S12 where a small group of pupils were sustaining a high number of exclusions and others operating at Level AB were unable to access the full curriculum.

With Action Plan funding Braeview decided to extend the alternative curriculum to S1 and S2. It established a class of 14-plus students operating in all main subjects but with a high level of support for learning, and classes of six to seven pupils with significant behavioural problems.

These groups are supported by a team of four community education youth workers and two education welfare officers (EWOs) who have been fully integrated into the school, a strategy which headteacher Alan Wilson believes is unique in Scotland.

“These students can now do the full curriculum but not in a mainstream class. These are not exclusion groups. This is social inclusion because they have tremendous support from all staff including guidance, support for learning and the youth workers and EWOs who have been working here for 18 months,” says Mr Wilson.

“Our aim is to sustain these pupils in school, improve attendance, deal with emotional and behavioural problems and get them some Standard grades. The evidence so far suggests that we will get results.”

School statistics show that attendance has improved and exclusions have fallen and in the last 18 months only one pupil has been moved off-site.

“The key is the inclusive model. The youth workers and EWOs are not ‘add on’ staff . They are here on an equal basis and are respected as such by teachers. They attend all required team meetings and share offices with guidance and support for learning.

“They have a drop-in base, hold lunchtime meetings and do home visits and parental workshops. Pupils seek out the youth workers and you can see that their social skills, sense of responsibility and ability to work with their peers have all improved.”

If the young people were back in mainstream classes without this support Mr Wilson believes it would damage setting, disrupt other pupils and harm the young people themselves.

“We go to the primary schools with the EWOs and youth workers and they run sessions in the school a week before the August opening, which helps with primary-secondary liaison, and as their success grows with pupils with serious behavioural problems, our plan is to use their skills one level up with pupils who have intermittent problems or are excluded intermittently.”

Success will be measured over a longer period, but because of the relationships built within the school Mr Wilson believes both groups can and will achieve Standard grades.

But success will also depend on finance. The six wages take more than pound;100,000 out of the Action Plan’s annual budget of pound;250,000, and the action plan funding is due to run out in March 2002.

Mr Wilson hopes the three-year funding can be extended to five years but believes the implications of this kind of model could be more far reaching.

“There’s a city-wide issue here. If our model succeeds, other schools might want to imitate it. There are long-term staffing implications.”

The obviously intended implication is that sustained success requires full-time funding. As Mr Wilson puts it, “There is no way back.”

Youth worker Alan Howieson puts it equally forcefully as we chat at the back of one of the alternative curriculum classes where a Hallowe’en party is in full swing.

“I thoroughly hope this model rolls out because it’s very much a consenting model. We negotiate absolutely all the way down the line with the young people which makes the decisions they take more meaningful to them.”

He believes that his fellow youth workers and the EWOs have integrated well and, more importantly, so have these pupils.

Like his colleagues he carries out his work not only in classes but also in the corridors, the playground and the parental home.

“We are reacting to issues all day every day to help these young people come to terms with their peers and with teaching staff. We have to deal with issues like bullying, but the bottom line is that a lot of these kids are vulnerable.

“We’re here to help support kids with specific learning needs and behavioural problems, to meet the needs of these young people seen to be having problems with their education.”