Chamber and committees

All students in receipt of anAdult Dependants’ Grant from the Student Awards Agency for Scotland aremarried. It is a stipulation of the current policy on Adult Dependants’ Grant thata student may only receive an Adult Dependants’ Grant in respect of a partner towhom he or she is legally married.

There is an extensive education and training plan for oral hygiene amongst children and young people in Scotland.

All parents of children under the age of one year receive an education and information pack, advising on good oral hygiene and oral care. To further complement this, children on starting nursery and starting school also receive similar advice.

We have further introduced an oral hygiene education into nursery schools and at present approximately 65-70% of all nursery school children undergo an education and training programme with regular daily supervised oral hygiene. This programme is being extended to targeted primary schools in next year’s programme (2006-07), although some areas have already started this.

Where a dentist does not agree to the extension of a continuing care or capitation arrangement, i.e. chooses to let the arrangement lapse at the end of the 15 month registration period, then he/she is obliged under his/her NHS terms of service to provide the patient with three months’ notice of the arrangement lapsing.

The Executive plans, as part of An Action Plan for Improving Oral Health and Modernising NHS Dental Services, to make registration a continuing and not time-limited system, with defined responsibilities for both dentists and patients.

Dentists are provided with copies of relevant information, including the National Health Service (General Dental Services) (Scotland) Regulations 1996, when joining an NHS board’s dental list. The National Health Service (General Dental Services) (Scotland) Regulations 1996 contain the terms of service which dentists providing NHS general dental services must comply with, including notice to patients when withdrawing from an NHS arrangement.

The Executive plans, as part of An Action Plan for Improving Oral Health and Modernising NHS Dental Services in Scotland, to make registration a continuing and not time-limited system, with defined responsibilities for both dentists and patients.

I refer the member to the answerto question S2W-17619 on 1 August 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions areavailable on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be foundat http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

The £18.5 million languagesfund provided to education authorities since 2001 has been used to: trainmodern languages teachers; allow teachers to be seconded to support modernlanguages developments; enhance learning and teaching resources; provideforeign language assistants; support cluster planning; provide links abroad;and to teach languages to nursery pupils and those with Additional SupportNeeds. We believe that this will have had a positive impact on attainment.

Through the implementationof A Curriculum for Excellence we will revise and streamline Primary curriculumguidelines and overhaul the curriculum in S1 to S3 to increase opportunitiesfor challenge, choice and motivation. Work in these areas will ensure thatchildren are able to maintain their progress in learning as they move frompre-school to primary, and from primary to secondary school. It will also allowteachers more flexibility and scope to provide rich and varied experiences. Theactions under A Curriculum for Excellence are expected to improvemotivation and attainment across the whole curriculum.

The Executive does not haveany contingency plans in place in the event of a shortage of donor sperm.

Earlier this year, the Scottish Executive contributed to a national campaign, in collaboration withthe Department of Health, to encourage more individuals, both men and women, todonate gametes for use in assisted conception treatment.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S2W-17913 answered on 9 August 2005. All answers towritten parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, thesearch facility for which can be found at: http://scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search.

We consider languagelearning to be very important at all ages and since 2001 we have providededucation authorities with £18.5 million to support languages learning andteaching.

Moreover, in APartnership for A Better Scotland we guaranteed every pupil the opportunityto learn a modern European language starting in the Primary school. A recentevaluation of languages provision in Scotland by HMIE shows that we are well on target for meetingthis commitment with 98% of Primary 7 pupils learning a modern language.