Schools and teachers must be allowed to “continue to look after children” - as they did during lockdown - instead of being under “intense pressure” to “chase this thing called attainment”, MSPs have been told.

Dr Colin Morrison, co-director of the Children’s Parliament, told the Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee this morning that, during lockdown, teachers were allowed to focus on their pupils’ mental health and wellbeing. He also said they ensured families had the basics they needed and they checked up on their pupils.

But he warned that the hard work invested in building relationships when school buildings were closed was in danger of being squandered because of the focus on attainment now that they were open again.

Related: Violent behaviour rising in early primary, says union

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Also this week: Scotland’s attainment gap programme faces overhaul

Background: Progress on closing the attainment gap ‘limited’

Also today: We will achieve nothing by demonising children

He argued that we need to “park” the focus on attainment and lost learning or “lose all the ground that we built in terms of maintaining relationships, especially with the most vulnerable children”.

Dr Morrison said: “I think the focus on attainment is the wrong focus... For me the focus was, during the pandemic, on wellbeing and on mental health - that’s what schools have told us was their main focus.

“Every good teacher we knew and we engaged with professionally was focused on some very basic things like maintaining the connection, checking in with children, asking them how they were, providing them with some fun, or structure to the day - however limited.

“[They were] making sure that mums, or dads, or grans, or whoever [pupils] lived with had the basics they needed - checking in that there was food in the house.

“These are the kind of things that many teachers were doing during the pandemic. They invested all that time in those relationships and wellbeing but now find themselves back in school with this intense pressure on what we call attainment.”

He added: “We want our children to do well in terms of literacy and numeracy, but unless we maintain those relationships, continue to look after the children, we are just chasing our tails in some ways.”

Dr Morrison said there needed to be “a cultural shift” and that improving children’s wellbeing should become the priority - not attainment - “because we have got all this evidence that wellbeing has been undermined”.

He concluded: “In this building, you must see the impact of mental health issues, anxiety, depression. These things are very real and they are real in our children. So, we can chase this thing called attainment, we can think that we can get children back to whatever normal was, but I think it’s such a lost opportunity. It’s a mistake.”

The education committee is investigating the impact of the Covid pandemic on children and young people, particularly those living in poverty.

Last week it heard from the EIS teaching union that there had been an increase in distressed and violent behaviour from pupils, “most notably among P1 and P2 children”.

Yesterday, the Scottish government announced an overhaul of the Scottish Attainment Challenge, which aims to close the attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils.

Now, instead of the funding being targeted at the nine councils with the highest levels of deprivation, it will be shared among all 32 local authorities.

The £7 million funding stream that targeted over 70 primaries and secondaries serving the most disadvantaged areas has also been scrapped.

However, the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) that gives money directly to schools based on the number of pupils claiming free meals is to be retained, and care-experienced young people will receive approximately £11.5 million next year, with around £9 million reserved for a number of national programmes.

In total, education secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville told the Scottish Parliament yesterday that “up to £200 million” would be invested in the SAC in 2022-23. This year, £215.2 million is invested in the SAC including a one-off £20 million boost to the PEF to support recovery from the pandemic.