NICOLA Sturgeon has dismantled claims made by the Scottish Conservatives that her government used Covid "as a shield" to deflect responsibility for Scotland's attainment gap figures.
Speaking at First Minister's Questions, Douglas Ross claimed that Nicola Sturgeon had failed to meet her promise to close the attainment gap in education, which refers to the lower chance of children from poorer backgrounds progressing onto further education in Scotland.
The First Minister then pointed out that the wording in the SNP manifesto was to "substantially eliminate the attainment gap" and highlighted that before the pandemic the poverty-related income gap was closing.
She added that recovery was now underway and that the percentage of children achieving the expected levels between 2021-2022 was higher than the previous year for all primary school ages.
Sturgeon also cited figures which showed that a record number of 18-year-old Scots secured a place at university this year.
However, Ross then accused the First Minister of using the pandemic as a "shield".
He said: "It's telling that when I have a short question the First Minister tells the truth because she did tell us that she promised to close the attainment gap.
"When she's got time to ruffle through her big folder she doesn't actually accept that and she says the promise has been met. It hasn't. She had failed people across Scotland.
"And yet again, Presiding Officer, what we get from the First Minister is the Covid shield."
But Sturgeon refuted the implication that Covid-19 did not have a severe impact on education, referencing the Tory-controlled UK Government's own analysis.
"When we talk about the attainment gap we, to be accurate, should talk about the poverty related attainment gap," she said. "Because it is poverty that drives that.
"And of course one of the measures of our commitment to tackling that is putting money into the pockets of the poorest families in the country at the same time as Douglas Ross's party takes money out of the pockets of the poorest families in our country.
"Douglas Ross, if he likes accuracy, should perhaps start to practice it. I didn't say the target had been met, that's a target for 2026.
"What I said, and backed up with lots of evidence, is that progress is being made.
"I wasn't using Covid as a shield, I was citing the evidence of the impact of Covid, the same way that the Department of Education (DoE) south of the border do."
The First Minister then quoted a statement from the DoE which highlighted how Covid had impacted the education system, which read: "Disruption to learning during the pandemic has had a greater impact on disadvantaged pupils."
She added: "Or if he doesn't want to take the word of a government run by his own party how about the CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation [who said] 'The findings add to a heavy body of evidence telling us that socioeconomic inequality in education, already entrenched before the pandemic, has grown'"
While the latest figures show an improvement in Scotland's attainment gap, Nicola Sturgeon insisted that that the job was not yet done.
She said: "We are seeing progress in narrowing the attainment gap. We see it in figures published this week. We see it in exam results. We see it in access to university.
"It's not yet job done, which is why I stand by everything I said: that it's one of the most important things this government is doing and that's why we'll continue to take the action to achieve it."
The latest statistics show that Scotland's poverty-related attainment gap in schools has had the biggest decrease since records began.
However, it still remains above pre-pandemic levels.
