Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S5W-07149

Asked by: Iain Gray, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 February 2017
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 28 February 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what subjects the Teaching Makes People campaign is targeting; how many recruits the campaign aims to attract, and how it will measure its effectiveness.

The Teaching Makes People campaign is targeting STEM subjects in general, and specifically Chemistry, Computing, Maths and Physics. The campaign has supporting objectives of helping change perceptions of teaching and career intentions among current STEM undergraduates at Scottish universities.

It aims to contribute to a 15% increase in applications to Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) courses in Scottish universities by March 2018, and its effectiveness will be measured by PGDE intake numbers.

Question reference: S5W-07146

Asked by: Iain Gray, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 February 2017
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 24 February 2017

To ask the Scottish Government who the members are of the Teacher Workforce Planning Working Group; how often the working group meets, whether it will publish minutes of each of the group's meetings since January 2015, and what the running costs of the group are.

The membership of the Teacher Workforce Planning (TWP) Advisory Group is as follows:

Members	Organisation
Rowena Arshad	Universities Scotland
Michael Boyle	Association of Directors of Education in Scotland (ADES)
Kathy Cameron	Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA)
Elaine Cook	ADES
Greg Dempster	Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland (AHDS)
David Drysdale	Education Scotland
Elizabeth Horsburgh	Scottish Funding Council (SFC)
Sarah Kirkpatrick	SFC
David Lott	Universities Scotland
Ken Muir	General Teaching council for Scotland (GTCS)
Morag Redford	Universities Scotland
John Stodter	ADES
Jim Thewliss	School Leaders Scotland
Louise Wilson	Teachers Panel
Stuart Robb (Chair)	Scottish Government
Stephanie Walsh	Scottish Government
Elisabeth Boyling	Scottish Government
Ann Hunter	Scottish Government

In 2016, the TWP Advisory Group met on 27 October and 15 December. Prior to 2016, in recent years the group met once a year in December.

There are no plans to publish TWP Advisory Group minutes. The group provides free and frank advice to Scottish Ministers on the requirements for newly qualified teachers. The advice of the group contributes to Scottish Ministers' annual guidance to SFC on initial teacher education. Scottish Ministers' guidance to SFC for 2016 is available at:

http://www.sfc.ac.uk/communications/Announcements/2016/SFCAN012016.aspx

The group has no running costs.

Question reference: S5W-07151

Asked by: Iain Gray, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 February 2017
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 24 February 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what the target intake for Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) (a) primary and (b) secondary teaching students for each university was for 2016-17, also broken down by subject; what the intake was, and what the target is for 2017-18.

The target intakes for Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) in (a) primary and (b) secondary teaching students for each university, including secondary subject intake targets in 2016-17, which are set at a national level, are available at the following link:

http://www.sfc.ac.uk/communications/Announcements/2016/SFCAN012016.aspx

The following table shows PGDE secondary subject intakes in 2016-17 at each university:

PGDE secondary subject intakes 2016-17

Subject

University

	Aberdeen	Dundee	Edinburgh	Glasgow	UHI	Strathclyde	West of Scotland	Total
Art			14	19		38	15	86
Biology	15		15	10		33	13	86
Business Education	14			18		30		62
Chemistry	12	10	12	12	1	31	3	81
Computing				23		18		41
Drama	11		15					26
English	17		20	32		79	15	163
Gaelic						4		4
Geography	13		9	10		25		57
History	17		12	10		27		66
Home Economics	4	15			1	27		47
Maths	24	9	14	25		50	6	128
Modern Languages	9		14	25		42	5	95
Modern Studies	10			9		28		47
Music			13			9		22
Physical Education			13			13	12	38
Physics	6	5	6	11	2	30	1	61
Psychology						17		17
Religious Education	7			6		11		24
Technological Education			14		3	30		47
Total	159	39	171	210	7	542	70	1,198

Scottish Ministers' guidance on student teacher intake targets for 2017-18 issued to the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) on 14-02-17. SFC will announce the allocation of 2017-18 student teacher target intakes to universities shortly.

Question reference: S5W-07145

Asked by: Iain Gray, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 February 2017
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 24 February 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what action it takes to ensure that there is a stable teacher workforce, and how it monitors the effectiveness of this.

The Scottish Government is taking a number of actions to ensure there is a stable teacher workforce. We have:

committed £88 million this year so every school has access to the right number of teachers;
launched a new teacher recruitment campaign on 8 February 'Teaching Makes People';
announced that eleven new routes into teaching will be developed by Scottish universities to help address recruitment difficulties in the hard to fill subjects.

The teacher workforce is monitored through an annual teacher census. The census along with other local intelligence feeds in to the Scottish Government’s annual teacher workforce planning exercise, conducted in partnership with other educational stakeholders, which projects the requirement for newly qualified teachers each year.

Following the 2017-18 exercise, we are recommending that the Scottish Funding Council increases student teacher intake for the sixth year in a row, by 371.

Question reference: S5O-00722

Asked by: Iain Gray, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 February 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 2 March 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what recent discussions it has had with retail banks regarding branch networks.

Question reference: S5W-07150

Asked by: Iain Gray, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Friday, 10 February 2017
Current Status: Answered by John Swinney on 21 February 2017

To ask the Scottish Government how many people have been recruited by each teacher recruitment campaign it has introduced since 2007.

The Scottish Government has delivered one teacher recruitment campaign, with a focus on the STEM subjects, since 2007. The #inspiringteachers campaign launched in 2015 resulted in an increase of 190 students entering PGDE Secondary teacher education courses at Scottish universities in 2016 compared to the previous year which represents a rise of 19% on the total number of students in 2015.

The recruitment of teachers in Scotland is a matter for individual local authorities. They have the statutory duty for education expenditure and are responsible for providing a complement of teachers which best meets the needs of each of their schools.

Question reference: S5O-00560

Asked by: Iain Gray, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 11 January 2017
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 18 January 2017

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to concerns expressed by the Royal Society of Edinburgh regarding an “absence of a clear rationale” for the school governance review.

Question reference: S5W-05440

Asked by: Iain Gray, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 08 December 2016
Current Status: Answered by Fergus Ewing on 19 December 2016

To ask the Scottish Government which local authority areas will be covered by the remit of the proposed South Scotland Enterprise Agency.

Question reference: S5O-00495

Asked by: Iain Gray, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 14 December 2016
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 21 December 2016

To ask the Scottish Government how it will compensate for the reported 60,000 tonnes of additional emissions that could be caused by it introducing a 50% reduction in air passenger duty.

Question reference: S5O-00407

Asked by: Iain Gray, MSP for East Lothian, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 November 2016
Current Status: Answered by Shona Robison on 30 November 2016

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the recent BBC Scotland investigation into maternity hospitals.

The safety of expectant mothers and their babies is of paramount importance and will remain so and we are working to ensure that Scotland is as safe a place as possible for mothers to give birth. To achieve this, Healthcare Improvement Scotland has led in the development of a national approach to learning from adverse events and is driving implementation through the Scottish Patient Safety Programme. There is also a range of activity underway in maternity and neonatal services aimed at continuous improvement in services, including our Maternal and Children's Quality Improvement Collaborative, part of the Scottish Patient Safety Programme, and the Scottish Government’s Stillbirth and Bereavement Group. The impact of this activity, and the hard work of maternity, neonatal and paediatric staff, has seen the number of stillbirths reduced by 18% in four years - that is 88 more babies saved through preventing stillbirth in 2015 compared to 2011, we have also seen reductions in neonatal and maternal deaths over the same period. However we are not complacent, and I expect to receive shortly the report of the Review of Maternity and Neonatal Services. The review will make recommendations on further improvements that can be made to ensure we have a model of care that delivers high quality and safe services.