More free childcare for one and two-year-olds from the poorest backgrounds will be included in the Scottish Conservatives' election manifesto, leader Ruth Davidson has said.
Ms Davidson said the policy would help address inequality at an earlier stage than the Scottish Government's plans to double free childcare for all three and four-year-olds during the next parliament.
In a speech to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in London, she said: "Given the gap that opens up among children from poor and wealthy homes before the age of three, we think action is required earlier.
"So, in our manifesto for the Scottish election we will argue that instead of extending that provision across the board for three and four-year-olds, we should provide more high-quality childcare for more one and two-year-olds, starting with those in disadvantaged homes.
"We also believe more funding will be required to train up a more highly-qualified professional workforce to carry out that childcare. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests, there has to be a point to this childcare.
"It has to be about offering proper early-years skills to children, developing literacy and numeracy, so that the gap that opens up at this young age is closed."
Ms Davidson's speech, which focused on anti-poverty strategies, also repeated calls to introduce a graduate contribution to replace free university tuition.
She said the cost of the SNP policy has led to funding cuts for further education, with a reduction in places.
"I would bring in a graduate contribution - no upfront fees and not anywhere near as high as here in England," she said.
"I would use those funds to back bursaries for poorer students and I would reverse the SNP cuts on further education colleges."
Ms Davidson also addressed pay inequality, backing consideration of proposals from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development for companies to ensure that reward packages are more aligned to financial and non-financial performance.
"I don't really think people resent the fact that a chief executive gets paid well or is the highest earner in an organisation," she said.
"I think they do resent it when they see CEOs cashing in hundreds of thousands in the bank no matter whether the company they run is going up in the markets or going down the pan.
"I think they resent it when record bonuses are paid to the boardroom, when members of the workforce are laid off or facing a pay freeze."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here