Chamber and committees

The target set out in Making it work together: a programme for government is that there should be an e-mail address for every school child by 2002.

The Scottish Executive expects that all teachers in primary schools will have their own e-mail address by 2002.

The Scottish Executive has not set any targets for pupils in pre-school centres to have their own e-mail addresses.

The target set our in Making it work together: a programme for government is that there should be an e-mail address for every school child by 2002.

This information is not available.

This information will be available when the detailed results of the 1999 School Census are published in July 2000.

The Scottish Executive expects that all teachers in secondary schools will have their own e-mail address by 2002.

The Scottish Executive has not established any targets for pre-school centres to have access to the Internet.

The review is useful to help explain the ways in which the social and physical environment can contribute to higher child pedestrian casualty rates. The Scottish Executive will take the study's findings into account when targeting road safety campaigns for disadvantaged areas. This will help us to make progress towards meeting our target for a reduction of 50% in the number of child road deaths and serious injuries by 2010.

Copies of the report Road Accidents and Children Living in Disadvantaged Areas: A Literature Review have been placed in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe).

Research published recently by the Scottish Executive found that child pedestrians from socio-economically disadvantaged families have a higher risk of injury in road accidents than children in higher socio-economic groups and that injuries tend to be of greater severity. The research suggested that the link between social deprivation and the high accident rate of child pedestrians may be partly explained by increased exposure to hazardous environments, such as busy roads with a lack of safe crossing sites, the location of schools within the community and the availability of and access to safe play areas. These factors, compounded by a lack of adult supervision of younger children, appear to exacerbate road accident rates in disadvantaged areas.

Research to be commissioned by the Scottish Executive later this year will consider road safety initiatives in deprived areas. In particular, the research will establish the extent and type of community road safety initiatives in Scotland, focusing on deprived areas. It will compare different types of initiatives and consider best practice. Guidelines to be produced in the light of the research will advise local authorities and community organisations on how to establish and run a road safety initiative.