Defining an issue is a vital first step towards creating a shared understanding of the problem. This lays the foundation for ensuring our collective response is more effective and leads to better outcomes for victim-survivors. This is particularly important in relation to honour-based abuse which has been misunderstood by professionals, meaning it is often not recognised and the required support to survivors not offered.

We have developed a policy definition of honour-based abuse that will provide staff responding to survivors with a consistent understanding of honour-based across different sectors. To do so, we undertook a literature review and worked with specialist organisations and academics in the Addressing Violence Against Minority Ethnic Women and Girls Network, and mainstream services including Social Work Scotland, Police Scotland, COPFS, NHS Scotland and local authorities to inform our work. We are currently working with these partners to explore practical ways the definition can be applied across services.

Developing a statutory definition will require extremely careful consideration and consultation to ensure it captures the complexities of honour-based abuse and aligns with legal frameworks. We will continue to work with our experts and partners to work through these challenges thoughtfully and ensure that our approach to addressing honour-based abuse, including a statutory definition if necessary, is robust and effective.

Abuse, violence or harassment of any kind, particularly violence against women and girls (VAWG), should not be tolerated in our society. We are taking forward a range of actions in schools to address VAWG and sexual harassment.

Our Equally Safe strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls emphasises the importance of challenging the underpinning attitudes which enable such violence to take place, including in education settings.

In March 2024 we published a national framework for schools to help tackle gender-based violence. It provides guidance on how schools can address the underlying causes of gender-based violence, and ensure appropriate action is taken in response to specific incidents.

To further support schools, we fund Rape Crisis Scotland to run Equally Safe at Schools, a programme which helps build a positive culture in which staff feel more confident and skilled in responding to incidents and disclosures of sexual harassment and students are empowered to seek help if needed. Alongside this, we also fund the Rape Crisis Prevention Programme to provide training for pupils on issues related to misogyny and violence. We also fund Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) Programme which is a peer education programme which works to tackle gender stereotyping and attitudes that condone violence against women and girls.

Relationships, sexual health and parenthood (RSHP) education is an integral part of the health and wellbeing area of the school curriculum in Scotland. RSHP education focuses on equipping children and young people with the knowledge, skills and values to make informed and positive choices about forming relationships. This includes understanding of issues like consent, appropriate relationships and boundaries, which can play a crucial role in helping to reduce instances of gender based violence.

We have also supported Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) to develop their new Digital Discourse Initiative, which is a free online resource for teachers and educators designed to equip children and young people with skills to navigate digital media and counter the impacts of disinformation and online hate. The resource features a detailed case analysis about the so-called ‘Manosophere’ and the promotion of radical misogyny online from Zero Tolerance, the charity working to end men’s violence against women.

There are 360 secondary schools in Scotland recorded in the 2024 school census. The following is a table of how many of these are currently signed up to ESAS, broken down by local authority area.

The Scottish Land Commission has not incurred any expenditure on diversity, equality and inclusion officers in any year since 2021.

The Scottish Land Commission has not incurred any expenditure on diversity, equality and inclusion training in any year since 2021, with the exception of 2024-2025 when £59.40 was incurred.

The Scottish Government holds no information on which public sector organisations have been awarded City of Sanctuary awards in the last 5 years. Some of this information is available in the Cities of Sanctuary UK 2024 Impact Report which is available on their website.

City of Sanctuary UK is registered as an independent charity working across the UK and I can confirm that no funding has been provided from Scottish Government to City of Sanctuary in the last 5 years.

We are working closely with the Mhor Collective and specialist violence against women and girls (VAWG) services, to identify the digital inclusion needs of women and girls who have experienced technology-facilitated VAWG and improve the support that is available to them.

We have established a VAWG Digital Inclusion Network, made up of specialist violence against women and girls (VAWG) services to consider how we can improve access to information and advice for survivors of technology-facilitated VAWG. This includes developing and sharing appropriate resources with the organisations supporting survivors and building the digital skills and confidence of staff and volunteers working in those organisations. We are funding the Mhor Collective, who have a long track record of digital inclusion work, to lead this work.

Recognising the barriers that exist for certain groups, we are considering the digital inclusion needs of minority ethnic women and girls, women involved in commercial sexual exploitation and women in rural and remote areas.

Our Equally Safe Strategy Delivery Plan committed to develop a campaign to work with men and boys to recognise that we need to challenge misogyny to pave the way for the effective dismantling of the gender-based structures and attitudes which enable and support violence against women and girls. We recognise that men and boys need to be part of the solution.

Officials have undertaken extensive desk research and insight discovery work to support the development of a campaign to tackle this issue. This work has been supported by an investment of £35,000 to date and further investment planned this year to develop, produce and launch the activity in the first quarter of 2026. We will work closely with our partners in the statutory and third sectors throughout the campaign development.

Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of postgraduate places that have been offered at Scottish universities.

Information on the number of students enrolled on postgraduate courses is published by the Scottish Funding Council annually. Latest publication: Higher Education Students and Qualifiers at Scottish Institutions 2023-24 - Scottish Funding Council.

I refer the member to a meeting of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee on 24 June 2025 on unimplemented legislation, including the Children (Scotland) Act 2020, where the Scottish Government provided an update on implementation of the register of child welfare reporters and child advocacy services in contact and residence cases: Official Report (columns 10 to 14).

We recognise the importance of section 21 of the 2020 Act and the need to ensure child advocacy is available to children in contact and residence cases. However, we are not in a position to implement this provision until other areas of implementation work (e.g. child contact services regulation and child welfare reporters) are further advanced. Therefore, we have not yet commenced section 21, but we will gather views of key bodies on what they would like to see in this area.

There have been four meetings of the working group on child welfare reporters to date with a focus on looking at what changes can be made to the system and how we will establish the register. We plan to publish minutes from those meetings in due course.