£19m on way to help pupils

HEAD teachers in Tayside and Fife will be handed £19 million to i mprove the performance of poorer pupils.

The cash injection from central coffers is part of the SNP’s drive to close the attainment gap, which reveals how dependent academic achievement is on family wealth.

But opposition MSPs have said John Swinney’s “sums don’t add up”, with the education secretary’s administration slashing education funding elsewhere.

Fife principals will receive £9.8m from the Pupil Equity Fund, compared with £5m for Dundee, £2.1m for Angus and £1.6m for Perth and Kinross.

The cash is divvied up to schools based on the number of pupils on their roll who are eligible for free school meals.

It will be up to school leaders how the money is spent.

Daniel Johnson MSP, Scottish Labour’s education spokesman, said the £120m fund does not come close to offsetting the SNP’s councils cut in this year’s draft budget.

Labour analysis found Tayside and Fife is getting £19m in attainment cash, while councils in the area are seeing their day-to-day budgets slashed by £46m in the draft 2017-18 budget.

Mr Johnson said: “Ministers cannot cut the gap between the richest and the rest while they slash £327m from local education budgets.”

Scottish Greens MSP Ross Greer said the Scottish Government’s claim it is extra money is “not true when they are proposing deep cuts to council budgets”.

Education takes up a major chunk of local authorities’ budgets. Their core grants are being cut by 3.2% for 2017-18, but finance secretary Derek Mackay says councils’ overall spending power has increased.

Liz Smith, for the Scottish Tories, said some schools in Scotland have not been given any cash. She called for assurances from ministers that this is “because the money there is not needed”.

Nicola Sturgeon has staked her reputation as First Minister on closing the attainment gap, which her party last year pledged to “substantially eliminate within a decade”. QUIZ ANSWERS: 1. Three. 2. Jay. 3. Henry VIII. 4. Harrison Ford. 5. 100 to 30. 6. Checkers. Missing link: MILK.

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