Chamber and committees

Whilst the Scottish Government supports NHS Health Boards in their efforts to ensure that they have the right staff in place to meet the healthcare needs of the local population, the detailed management of recruitment functions are a matter for the Health Board as employer.

NHS Grampian has confirmed that decisions about recruitment to posts at Dr Gray’s Hospital are made by the hospital’s senior clinical and management teams, who also undertake the shortlisting and assessment of candidates. They are supported by the NHS Grampian Recruitment team who provide guidance and management of the process of recruitment in line with established policies and governance arrangements.

The Scottish Government has no plans to change the status of the consultant-led maternity unit at Dr Gray’s hospital in Elgin.

Due to recent temporary changes to paediatric services at Dr Gray’s some women are currently being transferred to Aberdeen Maternity Unit. Women who have a baby and require specialist neonatal care may also be transferred.

No applications were received from Moray to the Regeneration Capital Grant Fund for 2018-19.

Organisations with an interest in improving local rail connectivity can apply to the Fund. Full details of the application process including eligibility criteria will be published in the coming weeks.

The Scottish Government recognises the significant contribution made by school libraries and school librarians to educational attainment, as evidenced by international research. I launched the School Library Improvement Fund in September, investing £1 million over three years in Scotland's school libraries. It will fund projects designed to enhance library provision in schools, as part of a wider approach to improve literacy skills and educational attainment. This fund was launched alongside the publication of 'How good is our school library?' guidance from the Scottish Library and Information Council, endorsed by Education Scotland. This guidance aligns with the 'How good is our school?' framework, supporting school librarians and senior managers to evaluate the specific contributions the library makes to school improvement. The development of the national strategy, whose advisory group is chaired by Martina McChrystal, Director of Library Services at the University of Glasgow, aims to create a consistent approach to service for pupils across Scotland and will be published in Summer 2018.

Research commissioned by the Scottish Library and Information Council in 2013 aimed to both identify and critically evaluate the effect of school libraries. It used both UK and international evidence from 2001 onwards, linking school libraries to educational achievement, attainment and learning in secondary education. The findings revealed a considerable body of international evidence showing that school libraries impact on: higher test or exam scores equating to academic attainment; successful curriculum or learning outcomes, including information literacy; and positive attitudes towards learning. A qualified, full-time librarian, who is proactive and has managerial status was one of a number of elements identified by the report as contributing to the impact on learning. The full report can be found on the Scottish Library and Information Council's website at: https://scottishlibraries.org/research-skills/impact-of-school-libraries/ (Williams, D., Wavell, C. & Morrison, K. (2013). Impact of School Libraries on Learning: Critical review of published evidence to inform the work of the Scottish education community. Aberdeen: Robert Gordon University Institute for Management, Governance & Society)

Research more recently commissioned by the National Literacy Trust also shows that students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are more likely than their peers to use their school library for both learning and leisure and are shown to benefit more from strong library programmes. The report is available on the National Literacy Trust's website at: https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/school-libraries-literature-review-current-provision-and-evidence-impact-2017/ (Teravainen, A. & Clark, C. (2017). School Libraries: A literature review of current provision and evidence of impact. London: National Literacy Trust)

The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) is the Scottish Government’s official tool for identifying concentrations of deprivation in Scotland. It is a relative measure of deprivation and takes into account aspects of deprivation that affect local areas, whether rural or urban.

While resource allocation does take aspects of deprivation into account where relevant and appropriate, the SIMD ranking in itself is not used in isolation in Scottish Government without due consideration to the issues and balancing factors, such as rurality and the local economic context. For example the SIMD has a minimal role in the allocation of funding in the local government finance settlement. The vast majority of funding to local government is calculated using the Grant Aided Expenditure (GAE) methodology. GAE is a needs based allocation methodology which attempts to establish direct measures of the “clients” for a particular service. Within the GAE methodology, the SIMD is used only to calculate one secondary indicator (road density/area deprivation) used in Street Cleaning GAE. The indicators used in the GAE methodology are agreed in conjunction with COSLA and local authorities and kept under constant review.

The SIMD adequately identifies elements of rural deprivation. However, when developing policy or making funding decisions we always recommend that policy makers use data appropriately. The SIMD team have provided training for analysts and policy makers in central and local public sector organisations to ensure that they fully understand the implications of their data. For example, we recommend that policy makers consider the individual SIMD domains for particular aspects of deprivation. One element of SIMD with particular relevance to rural deprivation is the geographic access to services domain. This reflects the adverse effects of long travel times for basic services, which are more common in rural than urban areas, and means that this domain is a good proxy measure for the additional barriers that people in rural areas face. We also recommend that additional indicators are used to supplement SIMD, whether in an urban or rural context. To assist with this in a rural context, the Scottish Government published case studies on how SIMD can be combined with other data to further target child poverty on Orkney Islands and fuel poverty in Dumfries and Galloway.

SIMD is kept under constant review taking advice from a range of external stakeholders.