NICOLA Sturgeon has dismissed Tory claims parents are being “left in the dark” on how schools are performing in key areas such as numeracy.

Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said parents were being left “without any idea as to whether standards are going up or down”.

She highlighted an earlier decision by the Scottish Government to scrap a national survey of literacy and numeracy, saying while new national assessments have been brought in there would be a five year gap in information.

The First Minister responded by saying more data was available than ever before, with the new testing system providing results for individual local authorities and schools, instead of just the country as a whole.

“Parents actually have much more of an idea how their schools are doing than they ever have before,” she said.

But Davidson, pictured, said: “What the First Minister doesn’t get is if you are the mum of a seven-year-old now, you’re not going to know until your child is a teenager whether this country is getting any better at teaching maths or not. And the reason for that is that old national survey showed standards were declining, so this SNP Government got the blame and then it cancelled the survey, that is what happened.

“And it’s left parents without any idea as to whether standards are going up or down.”

The Tory pressed the issue at First Minister’s Questions, saying Holyrood’s Education Committee had already warned of a “five-year gap in our knowledge because of the actions of this SNP Government”.

But Sturgeon insisted the “problem” with the way performance had been measured under the old Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy, was it failed to provide data at school or local authority level.

Find out more about our 10,000 Steps campaign here.