Schools are using money intended to close the attainment gap between rich and poor on staff bonuses and Astroturf pitches, according to Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson.

Ms Davidson made the claims at First Minister’s Questions this afternoon, when she raised a series of concerns about the government’s flagship £750 million Attainment Scotland Fund.

A report last Friday found that just £37.3 million of the £52 million allocated in the first two years of the fund had been spent, with tight timescales and recruitment difficulties given as reasons.

Ms Davidson said: “Money that should be spent on cutting the attainment gap now is instead lying in the government’s bank, account because they can’t find the teachers to spend it on.”

She also said that “serious questions” should be asked about the largest tranche of the money, the Pupil Equity Funding (PEF) which will result in £120 million going towards the poorest pupils in around 95 per cent of state schools this year.

‘Hardly closing the attainment gap’

Ms Davidson had heard claims that this money was “going on plugging gaps left by budget cuts, or to pay for other costs like campus police, staff bonuses and installing an Astroturf pitch”. She said “that’s all well and good, but it’s hardly closing the attainment gap”

But first minister Nicola Sturgeon hit back, saying headteachers could decide how best to use the money, and that projects which might not seem an obvious way of closing the gap could actually have a dramatic impact.

Ms Sturgeon said it was for schools to decide how PEF money could boost attainment - and that she had seen “perhaps some things that, at first glance, many people would think, ‘Is that appropriate in terms of raising attainment?’”

For example, she had visited a school in a deprived community where pupil attendance was an issue, so students and parents had been sent on a weekend trip - after which attendance improved.

‘Fundamental misunderstanding’

Ms Sturgeon added that the government had already shown it would intervene if the money was being spent inappropriately, as in North Lanarkshire last year when there were concerns that much of the local allocation had been earmarked to pay classroom assistants’ wages.

Ms Sturgeon said Ms Davidson had “displayed a fundamental misunderstanding” of the funding - and that the £750 million was to be spent across the whole current Parliament, from 2016 to 2021.

“Any money not spent in one year will roll forward to the next year - and every single penny, of course, will be spent on measures to reduce that attainment gap,” she said.

“In the early years of that programme, while plans are being put in place and, yes, while recruitment of extra staff is taking place, there will obviously be less money to spend than there will be in later years of that programme.”

Increasing investment

Ms Sturgeon added that last week’s report found that 78 per cent of headteachers thought the first two years of the Attainment Scotland Fund had helped close the attainment gap, and that 97 per cent of heads expected to see improvements over the next five years as a result of the funding.

She said that only £6 million had been spent in schools in the first year, but that the figure was rising to £179 million in the coming year, and that she did not recognise Ms Davidson’s concerns about PEF.

She said: “Frankly, I think Ruth Davidson needs to get out a bit more and visit a few more schools, because when I visit schools, what I hear about the Pupil Equity Fund is that it is the single most important thing that is happening just now in raising attainment in our schools.”

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