Dundee City Council has been rebuked for suggesting that schools use money aimed at cutting the attainment gap to replace scrapped swimming lessons.

Education secretary John Swinney said officials had been in touch with the council to say it was not acceptable for pupil equity funding to be used to plug the gap.

The SNP-led local authority plans to axe swimming lessons for primary school pupils and, in a statement, said those that wanted to continue teaching children to swim could use their allocation of pupil equity funding.

The government scheme hands funding directly to schools and headteachers to spend on initiatives aimed at closing the poverty-related attainment gap, with £120m distributed in 2017/18.

Mr Swinney was pressed on whether this was an acceptable use of the cash when he appeared before Holyrood's Education Committee.

Labour MSP Johann Lamont said: "I'm sure you would agree with me, you would be concerned if pupil equity funding was being used to substitute and fund something that would have been resourced through the mainstream in the past but has been cut."

Referring to the Dundee City Council pronouncement, she added: "Do you think that's an acceptable use of pupil equity funding?"

Mr Swinney said he did not and officials had spoken to the local authority in advance of the meeting.

He said: "The view that was taken within Dundee was that to obtain a 20-minute swimming lesson young people were missing out on learning and teaching for two hours, and at a time when we are pressing to enhance learning and teaching, the judgement was that that was not the best way to use two hours of learning and teaching time to get 20 minutes of swimming. So, that's a judgement that's there to be made.

"What is not acceptable - and we've made this clear to Dundee City Council and this point is accepted this morning - is the guidance that Johann Lamont has read to me, that if a school wants to use pupil equity funding to go and do that that would be acceptable, because it is not."