A fifth of Scottish schools have not been inspected for at least a decade, it has emerged. After a year-long Tes Scotland investigation, the schools inspectorate has also revealed that three schools - two of which are primaries - have not been inspected since 2002. The new data shows that 474 of Scotland’s 2,514 schools have not been inspected for 10 years or more.

First minister Nicola Sturgeon has been told that confident five-year-olds have been “crushed” by new national assessments. Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard used his slot in First Minister’s Questions last week to complain about P1 pupils being “driven to tears” by the literacy and numeracy tests introduced in 2017 - echoing concerns raised in a Tes Scotland exclusive in May.

An ex-council leader has come under fire for collecting the free pencils handed out at a poverty conference so that they could be used to resource a local primary school. The conference organisers said they were “stunned” and “taken aback” by the “odd request” from George Alexander, who at the time was leader of Moray Council. Mr Alexander gave the pencils, which had #FairerMoray stamped on them, to a primary serving a deprived area.

MSPs are calling for teachers to discuss raising the age of criminal responsibility from 8 to 12 with their pupils, including those in primary schools. The Equalities and Human Rights Committee wants to know if pupils agree with the move and whether they think 12 is old enough. Resources have been launched to support class discussion and detail how pupils can give feedback (find them at bit.ly/CriminalResponsibilityToolkit).