Sturgeon admits she made a 'mistake' over school attainment gap pledge

The former first minister said she did not anticipate the challenges involved, and conceded it would take "longer than I appreciated".

She made the comments during the launch of her memoir at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, where she was interviewed on stage by broadcaster Kirsty Wark.

The SNP’s 2016 Holyrood election manifesto said the party’s mission was to “make significant progress in closing the gap within the next parliament and to substantially eliminate it within a decade”.

Ms Sturgeon said her failure to close the gap was "possibly one of my biggest regrets", adding: "Not delivering it, but also at the time I made the promise of probably not appreciating as much as I quickly came to do the factors that would influence that, and that was not just about issues around the curriculum in schools, but what is the driving cause of the poverty-related attainment gap in our schools?

"It's poverty, it's the conditions children grow up in outside 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 the things that are lifting children out of poverty and I believe in time will make a difference."

The former first minister insisted Scottish education is not in the “terrible state” many critics allege.

"We saw the exam results last week - the attainment gap is starting to close,” she said. "I'm not going to sit here, though, and say I don't regret that it didn't go further, that I didn't meet [the pledge]."

She said she tried not to shy away from things she got wrong in her book.

"On this particular issue, again I'm being frank about it, it was probably a lack of appreciation of what you had [to do],” she said.

"I thought you go in, you have the London Challenge version [a school improvement programme launched by the UK Labour Government in 2003], you put money into school education - all of that is right.

"But unless you're changing the conditions kids are growing up in, then you're not going to have the impact, and that's what I learned along the way."

She added: "We need to do even more than we have done already to tackle the underlying poverty conditions too many kids are growing up in.

"It will take longer than I appreciated, or allowed myself to appreciate at the time, and that is my mistake.

"But it will work through the system. I absolutely believe that things like the Scottish Child Payment, if we're looking back a few years, 10 years from now, the benefits from that in school attainment, in the attainment gap, will be seen.

"Which is why that policy is, without comparison, the one that I'm proudest of.

"Child poverty in Scotland is falling right now. It's going up in the rest of the UK. And that's down to the Scottish Child Payment."

Tory MSP Miles Briggs said: “Nicola Sturgeon claimed that education was her top priority, but her record was disastrous – and now she says it will be another decade before progress is made on the flagship promise she made 10 years ago. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious for the young people she has let down.”