PLANS to give more money to schools in disadvantaged areas to help close the school attainment gap are flawed, leading officials have warned.
Education bosses said the proposals would fail to identify those in need of extra funding in rural areas as well as pupils with special needs and the children of refugees and asylum seekers.
Under a Scottish Government initiative £100 million of new money raised through the Council Tax will be spent on schools.
In order to target funds at those with the most need ministers have decided to use the proportion of pupils on free school meals - a key indicator of poverty.
However, a paper on the issue by the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland (Ades) said the use of free school meal entitlement would cause them "serious concerns".
It said: "First of all, work would need to be done in order to find out which families are actually entitled. Education is not privy to people’s personal finances and so it is actually free school meal registration which is collected.
"In Glasgow, the percentage of children registered for free school meals provides a reasonably good proxy for deprivation. However, it does not allow for the uniqueness of the community and therefore, English as an additional language needs to be included.
"In the North East of Scotland and in Dumfries and Galloway, free school meal registration has always been a poor indicator and does not correlate well with attainment."
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The report concludes: "Ades would be concerned if free school meal entitlement or registration was the only method used as this could potentially disadvantage schools in rural areas and in the North East."
Ades wants to see a number of other measures used including the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, entitlement for clothing grants, and information on specific barriers for individual children such as English as an additional language and the proportion of children with significant additional support needs.
The concerns were raised as council chiefs and teachers' leaders joined forces to challenge Education Secretary John Swinney's plans for reform in Scotland's schools.
Cosla said the plans to hand £100 million-a-year extra cash raised by council-tax reforms straight to schools "smashes" the link between local taxation and local services. Teaching unions raised concerns about the timetable for changes.
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Mr Swinney has said previously the intention of the changes is to drive improvements by allowing more decisions to be made by schools who are "best placed" to know what their communities need.
A Scottish Government spokesman said the additional funding would further support schools to raise attainment and "substantially" close the gap between rich and poor.
Meanwhile, the SNP highlighted figures showing more pupils across Scotland will return to school this week in refurbished buildings.
The total number of schools rebuilt or refurbished between 2008 and 2015 stands at 607 – almost a quarter of the school estate and nearly double the total number of rebuilds and refurbishments undertaken between 1999 and 2007.
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