AN £8,000 boost has been given to St Columba's High School to support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects.

The donation was provided by ExxonMobil’s Fife Ethylene Plant (FEP) and will be used to enter Dunfermline pupils into the LEGO schools challenge competition to design and build a robot.

The funds will enable them to buy kits for the teams and to cover the entry costs for the competition while a portion of the money will also be used to buy a plastics’ granulator machine as part of a project on recycling.

Nicola MacKinnon, principal employability teacher at St Columba's, said: "Our school is Fife's only Scottish Attainment Challenge Secondary, with many of our young people living in our most deprived communities.

"The donation will make a significant impact to our students' STEM capital. The commitment FEP has shown us will help to close the STEM skills gap in the school and we will be able to build capacity in STEM education.

"The money has allowed us to purchase equipment to participate in First Lego Tech Regional Competitions. It also has allowed us to work towards reducing our plastic waste by recycling the plastic in school to be reused in the technology department."

Three Fife schools – St Columba's, Beath, and Lochgelly – were all given funding as main link schools to the Mossmorran plant.

Martin Burrell, plant manager at FEP, said: "We are always looking to encourage more pupils to consider engineering as a career and we hope these will help with the subjects which promote such careers.

"Who knows, maybe some of these pupils could become our engineers of the future."