Today the Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, set out Scotland’s delivery plan for raising attainment in our schools. The plan sets out how we will ensure that every child, no matter their background, has the same opportunities and an equal chance to succeed.

Here’s what you need to know.

There is a shared commitment right across education to close the attainment gap between children from the most and least deprived backgrounds.

We will deliver this focus on closing the attainment gap by increasing investment in the Scottish Attainment Challenge and extending its scope over the next five years.

By August the Scottish Government will publish clear, practical advice on assessing achievement in literacy and numeracy and, by the end of the year, advice will be provided on the achievement of curriculum levels in every curriculum area.

The plan will ensure that teachers have more time to teach.

We will reduce workload in schools and de-clutter the curriculum – stripping away anything that creates unnecessary workload for teachers or pupils. To ensure that we have highly qualified and empowered staff we will also invest in teachers and their skills.

We will empower children and young people, parents, teachers and communities to take a much more active role in school life.

We will launch a governance and funding review, focussed on devolving decision making and funding to schools and communities. This will also support the development of school clusters and new education regions. Alongside this we will develop proposals for a fair and transparent national funding formula.

Read the plan in full here.