Chamber and committees

In their report Improving Schools in Scotland: An OECD Perspective, the OECD called for a strengthened middle operating through networks and collaboratives amongst schools, including school clusters, and in and across local authorities. The reforms set out in Education Governance: Next Steps - Empowering Our Teachers, Parents and Communities to Deliver Excellence and Equity for our Children, strengthens the middle and supports collaborative working at all levels of our education system through the establishment of Regional Improvement Collaboratives. In addition to providing a framework for strengthening collaborative working across and between local authorities and national agencies, we will work with partners to ensure that Regional Improvement Collaboratives support our schools and education professionals in learning from and sharing best practice, in forming and developing collaborative networks and in pursuing partnership approaches, including within school clusters. School level collaboration and leadership will be further strengthened through the development new Executive Head and Cluster Leader roles.

I am confident that the programme of reform we have put in place, combined with the excellence of Scotland’s hard-working teachers, will enable our education system to realise our ambition of excellence and equity for all.

As we have set out in the June 2015 Scottish Government publication Education Governance: Next Steps, councils will remain democratically accountable for schools in their area and will continue to have a crucial role in providing a wide range of education services. Our governance reforms are based on international evidence about what works, including on the impact of empowered, high quality teaching and leadership on improving outcomes. These reforms are one element in the range of actions the Scottish Government is taking to close the attainment gap and delivery excellence and equity for our children and young people.

The Scottish Government has made clear its commitment to tackle teacher workload and bureaucracy in education. We will work with local authorities, national bodies and other partners including the professional associations to ensure that the impact of changes on workload and bureaucracy are considered as part of the implementation process. The devolution of power to the school level means that the traditional roles of national and local government will change. However, local government will remain democratically accountable for the provision of early learning and childcare and of schools.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-09727 on 30 June 2017. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

As we have set out in section 4 of Education Governance: Next Steps - Empowering Our Teachers, Parents and Communities to Deliver Excellence and Equity for our Children, new Regional Improvement Collaboratives will deliver a range of benefits for Scotland's schools, children and young people. They will provide dedicated improvement support to Scotland's schools, support collaboration and the sharing of best practice and learning across the system, and will provide enhanced professional learning support for our teachers and headteachers. Delivering this within a regional framework, which brings together local authorities and national bodies, will ensure that our schools and education professionals receive consistent, high-quality support and advice which is centred on local needs.

We will launch procurement to deliver the initial phase of our 100% superfast broadband commitment by the end of this year. This will follow a State Aid Public consultation - a necessary precursor to public investment in broadband infrastructure – that will be published soon.

Prior to 2009-10 local authorities were not asked to specify whether a school was built or refurbished and information for 2007-08 and 2008-09 is outlined in table 1. In 2009-10 this information was collected for the first time, however, not all schools were categorised as being built or refurbished and information for 2009-10 is therefore presented in a separate table, table 2. Table 3 outlines the number of schools that were built in each local authority between 2010-11 and 2015-16, respectively.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government. Each local authority should be contacted for this information.

The Smart Meters rollout is a UK Government policy, led by BEIS and implemented by suppliers. The Scottish Government recognises the importance of the roll-out of smart meters as an important national modernisation programme that will bring benefits to Scottish energy consumers. Supplier cost savings are expected to account for almost half of the total benefits with saving expected in reduced costs related to meter reading and complaints handling.

The Scottish Government are working with suppliers, as well as consumer groups and national groups involved in the smart meter rollout, to ensure that the programme is delivered to the greatest number of Scottish consumers, at the lowest possible cost, whilst enhancing the benefits to the most vulnerable in our society and those at risk of fuel poverty. A key factor in helping promote the deployment of smart meters will be to effectively communicate the benefits to consumers.

Suppliers will require a significant number of skilled workers to complete the roll-out and the Scottish Government’s £12 million Transition Training Fund is actively engaged in supporting former oil and gas workers or those threatened by redundancy to transition into smart metering through its second procurement round. A smart metering skills action group has also been set up open to smart metering contractors, colleges, SP Energy Networks, SSE, SDS, and the National Skills Academy of Power.