MY BIGGEST REGRET

Sturgeon admits she let down poorer kids by failing to close the attainment gap, She 'underestimated challenges' when she said she would be judged on the issue

- CHRIS McCALL

NICOLA Sturgeon has admitted she let down poor kids during her time as first minister by failing to close the attainment gap.

As first minister she promised to “close the attainment gap completely” between school pupils from the richest and poorest backgrounds.

But she told an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival yesterday she had underestimated the challenges involved - and described it as one of her “biggest regrets” in politics.

Now political opponents have accused Sturgeon of “letting down’ Scotland's poorest kids.

Asked by host Kirsty Wark why the attainment gap was still there, Sturgeon said: “This is possibly one of my biggest regrets, and it comes from not delivering it.

“At the time I made the promise I was probably not appreciating, as I quickly came to do, the factors that would influence that.

“That was not just about issues around the curriculum in schools, but what is the driving cause of the poverty-related attainment gap? It's poverty, it's the conditions children grow up in outside of school.

“Some of the things that I am proudest of are the Scottish Child Payment, the doubling of early years education, the baby box - these are things that are lifting children out of poverty and I believe, in time, will make a difference to the attainment gap”.

In her 2016 Programme for Government, Sturgeon said she would push to substantially cut the different levels of exam success of rich and poor pupils by 2026, calling it ‘a yardstick by which the people of Scotland can measure our success’.