Ms Sturgeon has announced new standardised tests for primary and S3 pupils a £100 million attainment fund to be distributed over four years.
However, she has faced accusations of “butchering” funding for schools after the Scottish Government’s draft budget for 2016/17 cut local authority budgets by around £600 million.
In a speech to the David Hume Institute in Edinburgh, Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, accused John Swinney of making education an “easy target” for cuts and set out plans for a fund that would give primary schools £1,000 for every child from a poor background and nursery schools £300.
She said: “Under current government policy only some schools get special funding to close the gap in attainment. The problem with this approach is obvious – every nursery and every primary have poor children on the roll who need extra support.
“The absurdity of the current policy was brought home to me in when I was in Renfrewshire.” She highlighted the case of two primary schools that share the same campus, only one of which gets funding from Ms Sturgeon’s attainment fund.
Ms Dugdale argued handing the funding “directly to head teachers” would ensure that the “people who know best” would have the freedom to decide what changes they need to make.
The Scottish Lib Dems praised the pupil premium, introduced by the former Coalition Government in England, whereby schools receive up to £1,320 extra for each child eligible for free school meals at any point in the previous six years.
Liam McArthur, the party’s education spokesman, said Ms Sturgeon’s latest announcement would be welcomed by the local authorities and schools it benefits “but what about the children in the other 11 council areas?”
He added: “This broad-brush approach fails to acknowledge there are children in real need living in every part of the country. As such, it is difficult to see how the First Minister is living up to her promise to close the attainment gap completely.”
Ruth Davidson called for the creation of 10 specialist skills academies by the end of the decade to provide “world-beating training” in areas such as IT, engineering and construction.
Speaking during a visit to the BAE Systems shipyard in Glasgow, the Scottish Tory leader said: “We need to value a vocational education at least as much as an academic one. The current imbalance is absurd and desperately needs to be addressed.”
Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/579309/s/4cc9a925/sc/33/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cpolitics0Cnicola0Esturgeon0C120A938470CNicola0ESturgeon0Eschool0Eplan0Eexcludes0Eparts0Eof0EScotland0Bhtml/story01.htm