Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government will set out further details later this month as to how the commitment that nurseries in the most deprived areas will have an additional teacher or graduate from 2018 will be delivered.

Decisions regarding how teachers are involved in the delivery of early learning and childcare (ELC) are the responsibility of local authorities.

However, it is a requirement of the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) that every manager/lead practitioner of a daycare of children service must hold a relevant teaching qualification that meets the General Teaching Council (Scotland) regulatory requirements or must hold, or be working towards, a relevant degree level Childhood Practice award.

The BA Childhood Practice, which was launched in 2009, has been designed to ensure that practitioners have the specialist early years expertise and knowledge to support young children’s learning and to enable them to add value in early learning environments. There is now a greater mix of teachers and graduates across the ELC sector.

The Scottish Government is committed to going further and will ensure that nurseries in the most deprived areas will have an additional teacher or graduate from 2018.

We can see no finding in the UCAS 2016 End of Cycle Report which states that ‘university places will need to rise to meet demand’. However, the report does show an all-time record high number of Scottish domiciled students gaining a place at our universities through UCAS, as well as recording the highest ever entry rate to our universities for 18 year olds from Scotland’s 20% most deprived areas.

This record has been achieved as a result of substantial Scottish Government investment in Scotland’s higher education sector – with more than £1 billion invested each year for the past five years, and a further investment of more than £1 billion allocated in the 2017-18 draft budget. It has also been achieved whilst maintaining the Scottish Government’s commitment to ensure that access to university is based on the ability to learn and not the ability to pay.

The Scottish Government believes that children must have access to highly qualified staff with expertise in early childhood learning and development – and that this is particularly vital for those facing particular disadvantages. That is why we are committed to ensuring that nurseries in the most deprived areas will have an additional teacher or graduate from 2018.

We will set out further details as to how this commitment will be delivered later this month.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) awarded £6,532,226 towards project costs of £40,481,212, which represents 16.1% of the total.

In 2017-18, £120 million Pupil Equity Funding will be targeted to help children and young people overcome the barriers to learning associated with poverty. It will extend the reach of the Scottish Attainment Challenge to around 95% of Scotland’s schools and it will be a matter for schools to use the funding for additional staffing or resources that they consider will help raise attainment.

Pupil Equity Funding will be paid by means of specific grant to local authorities, indicating the allocations for individual schools. Pupil Equity Funding will be additional to core education funding and therefore separate to any funding provided under the devolved school management system.

The proposal by the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) to establish a dedicated centre for the study of economics in education forms part of its response to the Government’s consultation on “Empowering Teachers, Parents and Communities to Achieve Excellence and Equity in Education, a Governance Review”. The RSE’s paper will be considered alongside all other responses to the consultation which closed on 6 January 2017.

The Scottish Government is committed to taking an evidence-led approach to the reform of Scottish education. The Education Governance Review is underpinned by current evidence on the performance of Scottish education and best practice internationally of the effective governance of education systems.

The key sources and documents used to inform our approach to the review are set out in chapter 10 (“Evidence and Reference Materials”) on page 20 of “Empowering teachers, parents and communities to achieve excellence and equity in education: A governance review”, which is available on the Scottish Government website: http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/09/1251.

The Scottish Government does not normally collate information on teacher vacancies. However, I can confirm that local authorities as employers do hold teacher vacancy data.