Chamber and committees

The proposed 10% deduction is an individual arrangement discussed between the nursery and parents, which has now been rejected by the nursery in question. Local authorities are legally obliged to provide the mandatory amount of early learning and childcare free of charge. We expect nurseries to pass on the full entitlement of their partnership provider funding to parents. We have identified partner provider funding and parent charges as an area that could usefully be clarified through updating the statutory guidance on early learning and childcare, which will be carried out in 2017. Officials have spoken with Glasgow City Council who have confirmed that the issue with the nursery in question is resolved. My officials have also written to Fair Funding for our Kids to confirm this and to indicate that we will consider this issue when we update the statutory guidance to provide further clarity for all local authorities and partner provider nurseries.

Scottish Government does not collect information on financial arrangements between local authorities concerning cross-boundary early learning and childcare placements.

Through its high performance lifestyle programme, sportscotland, the national agency for sport, provides a tailored coaching and mentoring service that supports performance athletes to manage the changes, challenges and choices that enable them to focus on performance sportand also prepare them for life after sport. Working with clinical specialists, mental health is a key strand of work within the programme.In addition, the athletes benefit from sessions on resilience, including Mental and Physical Health, in conferences and personal development sessions.

The SPFL Trust’s Legacy 2014 Supporting Communities Programme was supported in 2013-14 by £500,000 of Scottish Government funding and demonstrated the power of football to reach out to people and change lives. Whilst funding for the programme ended in March 2014, one of the key developments within the programme has been the establishment of a dedicated SPFL Trust website at http://spfltrust.org.uk from which people across Scotland can find out what is going on at a club in their community and how they can get involved. In addition we continue to work closely with the Trust and member clubs to discuss shared priorities, including mental health, obesity and employability. This has included the development of, and support for, the successful Football Fans in Training programme since 2010.

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 number of requests to the SQA’s Post Results Service in 2016 needs to be seen in the context of the introduction of a new service from 2014.

Whilst the 13,908 requests made in 2016 represents a 64.6% increase on the 8,448 requests made in 2014, it is a much smaller increase of 15.2% on the 12,077 requests made in 2015. Furthermore, in 2013, the final year of the previous Appeals system, the number of appeals lodged was 66,204 (or 6.5% of entries).

It is not unexpected that the number of review requests since 2014 should increase as schools and colleges become more familiar with the service.

The number of Post Results Service requests made in 2016 is a very small proportion of the total number of entries at 2.7%. Grades only changed for 0.5% of all eligible entries as a result of marking reviews.

The data provide includes only teachers whose 'main subject taught' is recorded as a foreign language in the teacher census, conducted annually in September.