Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government’s latest Financial Sustainability Health Check was published on 31 July 2023. It collected data at a national level through provider surveys, and reported that 81% of funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) providers in the private and third sector were paying the real Living Wage to either all their staff or those delivering funded ELC.

The Scottish Government is working with COSLA and local authorities, including through the ELC Fair Work and Real Living Wage Implementation Group, to identify approaches to strengthen the evidence base on the number of funded ELC providers paying the real Living Wage.

The Care Inspectorate publishes annual statistics on the number of childminders operating in Scotland. The following table summarises published Care Inspectorate data from the last 10 years. The figure for 2023 is expected to be published in the autumn of 2024.

Scottish Government have committed to ensure that sportscotland’s Active Schools programme is free for all children and young people by the end of this Parliament. While there are still a small number of cases where charging remains, it is not currently possible to determine how many children this applies to.

The Active Schools Network consists of over 400 Active Schools managers and coordinators working with schools. This means that every state school in Scotland is supported by an Active Schools coordinator dedicated to developing and supporting the delivery of quality sporting opportunities for children and young people.

Data published by sportscotland in 2023 shows significantly increased participation levels across the past academic year (2022-23), with over 4.6 million visits (a rise of 34% on 2021-22) made to almost 247,000 Active Schools sessions. The number of Active Schools participants (over 269,000 children and young people), deliverers (over 17,900 with 90% of those being volunteers), and school/club links (over 2,500) also increased from the previous academic year as the recovery from the pandemic continued.

The Scottish Government recognises the important role Active Play has in providing children with the opportunity to develop physical skills in their early years and to encourage a long-term relationship with physical activity. The Active Play Development Project continues to have a positive impact for children, with the delivery of high quality Active Play experiences and resources across three local authority areas Glasgow, Highland and North Ayrshire.

Enjoyment in Active Play has been one of the biggest drivers for children’s participation, because of this fun and inclusive approach, children are more motivated and confident to be physically active. There are currently 1213 children directly participating in the programme in a range of settings and the reach continues to grow as learning from year one of the project is built upon.

There could be a number of contributing factors relating to the differences of recorded Additional Support Needs (ASN) data between ELC and schools.

The 34% of learners who were recorded as requiring additional support in the 2022 pupil census represents a cohort of learners who have spent a longer period of time in primary, secondary and special school settings compared to ELC. The length of time children and young people spend in primary, secondary and special school settings combined with their individual stage of development, strengths, areas of need and circumstances provides increased opportunities to identify, understand and record their needs. It is therefore highly likely that there will be a higher incidence of reporting in school settings compared to ELC settings.

An additional support need can arise for any reason and may not be permanent. There is a wide spectrum of support that may be needed, from support to overcome barriers arising from health or disability, to support for social and emotional reasons. In addition, the factors which give rise to additional support are often interconnected. Children and young people may also have more than one type of additional need that has been identified over a period of time in primary and secondary settings. This means that the total percentage for ASN categories does not equal the sum of individual types of additional support needs.

Identifying additional support needs in young children should be a holistic and collaborative approach that is centred around the child. It usually takes place over a period of time, to take cognisance of the child’s individual stage of development, strengths, areas of need and circumstances. It should involve the gathering of information from varied sources in order to identify their needs and to suggest appropriate interventions, support and planning. This can include consultation which actively involves educators, parents/carers, the child and other agencies. This is often not achievable until primary or secondary school, and is another factor that is reflected in the differences in recorded statistics.

My officials and I continue to engage with relevant parties to inform decisions on future college governance arrangements in the Lanarkshire and Glasgow regions.

I met last month with the chair of the Lanarkshire Regional College Board.

Next week I am seeking to meet with the Principals and Chairs of the three Glasgow colleges.

I would hope to make an announcement in both cases, shortly .

The Scottish Government does not allocate fully registered teachers to local authorities. Statutory responsibility for the recruitment and employment of teachers and all other support staff in local authority schools sits with individual councils.

Probationer teachers progressing through the Teacher Induction Scheme (TIS) are placed with local authorities through an allocation process. This is a placement and not employment. Where the number of probationers exceeds the number of places offered initially by local authorities these are subsequently allocated on a supernumerary basis. As previously indicated in answer to S6W-23885 this number was initially 626. To date there are over 500 deferrals and withdrawals from this year’s initial cohort so the 600 “supernumerary” figure as of May 2023 does not mean there are 600 surplus teachers.

I shall lead a debate in Parliament on the recommendations of the Independent Review of Qualifications and Assessment on 28 February 2024.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-25062 on 27 February 2024. 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 .

All of the test and learn projects in this phase of the Scottish Educational Exchange Test and Learn pilot were led by Scottish higher education institutions.

(a) 23 applications were submitted

(b) 2 projects applied for additional funding for cross sector projects

(c) 3 projects applied for the full £25,000 (in addition to those who applied for extra cross sector funding. The total amount applied for was £345,093.10