JOHN Swinney announced plans to spend £45 million of government cash on helping 72 Scottish schools shrink the attainment gap next year.

The latest round of the £750m Scottish Attainment Challenge funding will go to headteachers in the nine local authorities with the highest concentration of deprivation.

The Education Secretary announced the funding during a visit to Newark Primary School holiday club in Port Glasgow, set up by teachers and parents using money allocated to them under the scheme last year.

Swinney said: “Improving the education and life chances of our children and young people is the defining mission of this government.

“Central to this is the Scottish Attainment Challenge, which is providing £750 million during the course of this Parliament to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap by supporting hundreds of schools develop approaches to improve literacy, numeracy and health and wellbeing.

“During my visit to Newark Primary School, I was able to see first-hand the very real benefit this funding is having on children and young people, their families and the wider community.”

He added that the announcement would ensure “local authorities and individual schools where the need is greatest have substantial additional funding for the coming year to tailor their plans based on their own circumstances.

“This work, along with the introduction of Pupil Equity Funding, forms the backbone of our focus to target resources where they are needed the most whilst also empowering schools to ultimately improve the life chances of all children and young people in Scotland.”

The £120m Pupil Equity Funding scheme involves schools being given about £1200 per pupil linked to the number of youngsters who meet the criteria for free school meals to use in closing the attainment gap.

Labour councillor Stephen McCabe, who leads Inverclyde Council, welcomed the SNP government’s money, saying the funding was playing a “major part” in the success of the region’s education performance.

He said: “We have been able to more than double the provision of lunch clubs across Inverclyde this summer and hundreds of families have been enjoying the range of activities and lunches on offer.”

The nine council areas with the highest concentration of deprivation are Clackmannanshire, Dundee, East Ayrshire, Glasgow, Inverclyde, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire.

Green MSP Ross Greer welcomed the money but said it still wasn’t nearly enough: “It would be petty not to welcome extra funding for our schools but what’s announced does not come close to reversing the decade of cuts to teachers, support staff and resources we’ve seen under the SNP at Holyrood and the Tories at Westminster.

“Our schools need a huge cash injection just to recover the 4000 teaching posts lost in the lifetime of this government.”

Scottish Tory education spokeswoman Liz Smith warned the money going to schools rather than targeting poorer pupils would create a “postcode lottery”.

She said: “Whilst it is a welcome move in tackling the attainment gap, it falls short of addressing the gap that exists across the whole of Scotland.

“We have long argued that funding should follow the pupil and the current attainment fund fails to do so on the basis that it is targeted at schools.”

She added: “It is clear that deprived pupils in local authorities, such as Aberdeenshire and Perth and Kinross, will not benefit from this next wave of funding.”