Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie has called for the school starting age to be raised to six or seven.

At the party’s autumn conference in Dunfermline today, Mr Rennie will argue that raising the school starting age will bring “long-term educational benefits”. 

He will say: “In 1870, the House of Commons chose an early school starting age so that children’s mothers could provide cheap labour in factories. It wasn’t for the benefit of the children but for the profits of unscrupulous bosses.”

Mr Rennie will add that almost nine in 10 countries in the world start formal education at the age of 6 or 7, and that Scotland is “on the wrong track”.

An EIS teaching union spokesman said it had agreed to “investigate the opportunities and challenges associated with a change to the school starting age through a possible move to a kindergarten model of early years education”.

He added: “Other countries whose children start school later have universal preschool provision, something we don’t have in this country.”

Mr Rennie will also call today for controversial Scottish National Standardised Assessments (SNSAs) to be scrapped for P1s, who are aged 4 and 5.

A spokesman for education secretary and deputy first minister John Swinney described the Lib Dems’ call to scrap P1 SNSAs as “reprehensible”.

He said: “School assessments have been used in Scotland for years. Twenty-nine of Scotland’s 32 councils had them before the national scheme was introduced - including many Lib Dem-run councils - and, unlike the new scheme, the majority assessed P1 pupils twice.

“Throughout that time we didn’t hear a peep from Willie Rennie. It would appear he only discovered he was against school assessments when a new version was introduced by the SNP government.”