Chamber and committees

The M8 Woodside Viaducts are a vital element of the motorway and road network serving Glasgow, the wider region and country, carrying approximately 150,000 vehicles per day. The structure requires to be temporarily propped to facilitate the refurbishment of the bridge elements in need of repair. The temporary propping design and implementation is highly complex in nature and requires careful consideration of the underground services and other site constraints in the vicinity of the Viaducts.

The budget allocation for the ongoing works on the Woodside Viaduct project for the 2024-25 financial year is £46.97m.

As set out in answer S6W-26209 on 19 April 2024, the information requested on how many cancer nurses have been employed in each year since 2011-12, broken down by NHS board area is not centrally available. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The future investment in our transport network will be set out in the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2) Delivery Plan. This will align with the sustainable mode and investment hierarchies. New roads projects will normally only be taken forward where they reduce the maintenance backlog; address road safety concerns or adapt the network to deal with the impacts of climate change or benefit communities such as bypassing settlements.

The impact of climate change is built into Scottish Transport Appraisal Guidance (STAG) with a specific Climate Change criteria introduced in the latest update. As part of this approach two transport modelling scenarios in transport appraisal ensure that the 20% car km reduction target is a key part of the appraisal of transport projects, including road project appraisal. As such, climate change impacts are a key part of our investment decision making processes, including prioritising investment in line with the sustainable investment hierarchy.

We will publish a final 20% reduction in car use route map by autumn 2024 which includes a timeline for implementing demand management. This will include consideration of how local government action can further incentivise the switch to EVs in addition to reducing overall car km.

We will carefully consider the UK Climate Change Committee report recommendations and provide a Scottish Government response in due course.

Skills Development Scotland provided funding for the delivery of Modern Apprenticeships of £57,133,317 to Independent Learning Providers in 2022-23.

For delivery of Foundation Apprenticeships, Skills Development Scotland provided funding of £1,565,251 to Independent Learning Providers in 2022-23.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. The Digitisation of records is an operational responsibility of individual Health Boards and GP practices, therefore, it may be available from local Health Boards.

There is only one high street ophthalmologist (ophthalmic medical practitioner) listed to provide General Ophthalmic Services in Scotland.

However, community optometrists have been increasing their role to support the care of NHS patients and this is continuing. NHS Education for Scotland funded training is enabling more optometrists to become independent prescribers each year resulting in more care for patients without the need for hospital referral or general practice support. Scotland is also the first country in the UK to embed independent prescribing into the undergraduate optometry course from this autumn.

Additionally, community optometrists are also becoming accredited around Scotland to safely manage the care of patients with lower risk glaucoma, enabling the discharge of these patients to high quality care nearer to home, freeing up much needed hospital eye service capacity.

The Scottish Government has not recently undertaken an assessment of unmet need for people with hearing loss, but we are engaged with stakeholders and those with lived experience to inform our understanding of unmet need.

As part of the See Hear Strategy refresh, we have engaged with people who are hard of hearing, deaf and deafblind. This includes children, young people and their parents/ carers.

We asked what topics and issues matter to them for inclusion in the strategy, through an online survey and a series of in-person and online focus groups and interviews.

In total we have received insights from over 170 adults with lived experience and 17 parents and carers of children/young people. Additional focus group discussions were held with 17 children and young people with lived experience from all sensory impairment groups. The engagement took place between September 2023 and February 2024.

This relates to indicative figures provided by universities at the start of the academic session. The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) will publish the 2023-24 academic year Official Statistics data in 2025. These will provide the most accurate figures on enrolments into modern language Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes.

This information is informing the work of Strategic Board for Teacher Education, which is considering issues around the recruitment and retention of teachers in Scotland in detail together with work to improving the promotion of teaching as a valued career.

Both the Scottish Government and Scottish Funding Council have offered to work with universities to develop alternative routes into subjects which have traditionally been difficult to recruit to.

Our Teaching Bursary Scheme is offering a £20,000 payment to career changers who are looking to undertake teacher training in hard to fill STEM subjects – physics, maths, technical education, computing science, chemistry and home economics. The scheme was also extended to include Gaelic as a secondary subject, and Gaelic medium across all secondary subjects and in primary.

The Scottish Government has no plans to remove the requirement for headteachers to hold the Standard for Headship.

The Scottish Government allocated grant funding to Higher Education Institutions to deliver the Into Headship programme, as outlined in the following table: