Kezia Dugdale has attacked the SNP's "absurd" approach to school funding which has resulted in one school receiving special funding in a shared campus with another that lost out.

The Scottish Labour leader visited Cochrane Castle and St David's primary schools, which share a campus in Johnstone, Renfrewshire. Both educate poor children but only one receives additional support.

Ms Dugdale has proposed "a radically different approach" which attaches the funding to each poor child rather than the school they attend.

Labour's Fair Start Fund would allocate £1000 to every poor primary school child and £300 to every poor nursery child, and give head teachers the discretion over how to spend it to meet the needs of the individual child.

In a speech to the Royal Society in Edinburgh, Ms Dugdale said: "Under current Government policy only some schools get special funding to close the gap in attainment.

"The problem with this approach is obvious - every nursery and every primary have poor children on the roll who need extra support.

"The absurdity of the current policy was brought home to me in when I was in Renfrewshire. I visited two schools in one building: Cochrane Castle primary school and St David's primary school in Johnstone.

"They share a joint campus. The pupils use the same gym hall, the same dining hall, the same playground.

"However, only one of those schools gets money from the Scottish Government's attainment fund. One school gets funding to close the gap, but the other is left behind.

"We would take a radically different approach. We would introduce a Fair Start Fund which follows every child from a poorer family to school.

"By linking funding to children we would ensure that every school has an attainment fund equal to its needs.

"We would also learn from the approach the Labour Government has taken in Wales. We would hand this investment directly to head teachers."

It comes as A new £1.5m fund to help schools across Scotland come up with innovative ways to improve attainment was launched by the First Minister.

Nicola Sturgeon also confirmed £2.5m of allocations to 57 schools that will receive funding as part of the Scottish Attainment Challenge Schools Programme, during a visit to Warout Primary and Community School in Glenrothes, Fife.

The £1.5m fund will be used to support projects aimed at improving literacy, numeracy, and health and wellbeing for deprived children. It will be open to primary, special and secondary schools who are not already benefiting from the Attainment Scotland Funding, the Scottish Government said.

Pupils at Warout showed Ms Sturgeon their Steam (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) project, a science-based approach to learning as part of the school curriculum. The school is to receive £67,450 from the Attainment Scotland Fund this year to help with their project.

The First Minister said: "I've made it perfectly clear that closing the attainment gap between Scotland's least and most deprived children is one of my key goals.

"The Scottish Attainment Challenge Innovation Fund is an important addition to how Scottish Government is taking action to allow this to happen. The Attainment Scotland Fund is already supporting schools in the most deprived areas to implement projects to raise literacy, numeracy, and health and wellbeing; the Innovation Fund will bring resources to more schools across Scotland and will complement this work.

"We want teachers and pupils to get creative, be excited about learning and come up with imaginative approaches to it; to find out what works and share that with others. "