The SNP’s defining mission to substantially eliminate the poverty-related attainment gap in Scotland’s schools by 2026 has been abandoned, the party’s education secretary has admitted.
Shirley-Anne Somerville confessed that the government had made slow progress before the pandemic and refused to set a new “arbitrary date” for completion.
Somerville claimed today that “it has always been a long-term project” — despite setting a clear target in 2016 to close the gap within a decade.
