“We had taken 90 kids aged 10 to 14 away to the Inverclyde National Sports Centre in Largs, and on Friday night it was mayhem. It sounded as if every one of them was complaining about their supper: “What’s that supposed to be? I can’t eat this.”

“When I went back on Sunday lunchtime the difference was incredible - the children were queuing quietly at the hatch. They were being courteous to the catering staff. They were coming into the dining room, sitting down and talking in normal, socially acceptable tones.

“I kept asking the organisers what they’d done to them. The answer, I realised eventually, was that they’d been treating them all weekend like people, and giving them constant encouragement and support. The adults showed they were interested in the youngsters, and they responded in that amazing way.”

These residential weekends at the Sports Centre have so far proved the most popular component of Out of School Learning, a three-year project organised by Renfrewshire with pound;760,000 from the National Lottery’s New Opportunities Fund. The other three sets of activities, based on homework and library, museum and observatory, and the theatre, take the form of weekly sessions of one to two hours targeted for a term on a particular geographical area and the schools it contains.

“We did have a bit of a selling job with some of the other components such as homework clubs in the libraries,” says Ms Keane, “but they too are now generating a lot of interest. One of the key features is an informal, relaxed environment that is nothing like school. We also provide unusual and interesting activities such as poetry readings and creative writing workshops run by authors, and stories told by traditional storytellers.”

Out of School Learning is very much a joint enterprise, devised and run by representatives from education, sport, libraries, museums and the arts. At the Coates Observatory in Paisley, youngsters have been studying the stars with the help of a 100-year-old telescope.

“We made Spitfire rockets and went on a computer where you could click on things like the moon and it told you about it,” explains Zak Mitchell from Heriot Primary. “We looked at the stars, and astronomers told us about astronomy.”

Now in its second year, Out of School Learning provides free events and activities to children from Primary 6 to Secondary 2 attending any of the authority’s 31 schools. The overall aim is to tackle inequality and disadvantage by building children’s self-confidence and fostering their communication and team-working skills.

At Paisley Museum the staff are helping youngsters use digital photography, video and radio to investigate the history of their communities and the importance of families. Before Merksworth High closed this summer, a group of youngsters captured the thoughts and feelings of local residents, pupils and teachers and gathered them together to create “Merksworth Memories” for local radio, as well as an exhibition that opened at Paisley Museum on October 25.

The Satellite Theatre Company has been set up for the project, to run workshops and taster sessions in modern performing arts such as hip-hop, DJ mixing, street-dance and digital arts. But given the age and background of the youngsters, it is the residential sports courses that are proving the most challenging while at the same time offering them most scope for personal development.

“We have to do a lot of preparatory work before the kids go away,” says sports development officer Evelyn Stevenson.

“We give them an introductory block of four to six weeks, which lets the kids meet the coaches, and try a whole range of activities - hockey, football, basketball, volleyball, athletics, orienteering, water-sports, as well as old-fashioned street games like dodgeball and British Bulldog. Because they first meet all this in a familiar setting they are keen to take part when they are down at Largs.

“We also keep an eye on those who might be struggling. Last year we thought we were going to have to bring back one wee boy, who’d never been away from home, on the Friday night. But we worked with him doing games and chatting and in the end he stayed to the Sunday, and he and his mum were delighted at his achievement.”

Whatever the nature of the activities, participating youngsters are asked to evaluate them, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

“We played thousands of games and I tried a couple of things I haven’t done before,” commented Debbie Kyle, a first year pupil at Castlehead High. “It was great. The best thing was meeting people and making new friends.”