The first minister has promised at the start of the academic year to continue to focus on narrowing the disparity between the most and least deprived areas in Scotland.
Some £750 million will be invested in the Attainment Scotland Fund over the course of this Parliament, with the latest tranche of £2.8 million being distributed to 46 primaries across 12 local authorities.
In areas of deprivation across the country teachers are already developing innovative approaches to improving literacy, numeracy, health and wellbeing, Ms Sturgeon said on a visit to Burnfoot Community School in the Borders.
“At Burnfoot, for example, there has been a significant focus on family support, family learning programmes and links with the wider community,” Ms Sturgeon said.
However, Liz Smith of the Scottish Conservatives said that while everyone agreed tackling the attainment gap should be the priority for schools, “none of these things can happen with the SNP’s current approach”. Instead, major structural changes are needed, she argued.
“The ambition should be about ensuring young people have good quality early years provision, and that they get access to top class local schools, teachers and support staff with a wide range of subject choice and extra-curricular activities,” she said.
“We need radical reform in our schools which allows headteachers to have more control and which allows parents both more involvement in and more choice over their child’s schooling.”
Scottish Labour education spokesman Iain Gray said his party had outlined a “series of positive policies” to cut the gap between “the richest and the rest”. He said: “We would scrap unfair charges for exam appeals, which favour private school pupils over those educated in state schools, and we would introduce a Scottish Graduation Certificate to replace the failing baccalaureate.
“While the first minister poses for photo ops in the Borders, her government is only delivering attainment funding to two schools out of 63 in the area.”
The SNP should stop cuts to education budgets and back Labour’s plan for a 50p top rate of tax for those earning more than £150,000 per year to invest in schools, Mr Gray said.