Chamber and committees

Spending on children taken into care is the responsibility of a number of corporate parents set out in schedule 4 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. The level of spending on looked after children is set by each body, including local authorities. The Scottish Government makes no discrete projections on the level of such spend.

Scottish Government supports corporate parents with a number of nationally funded initiatives funded through the improving outcomes for looked after children budget within the children and families directorate. Funding for these national initiatives and for local government is determined through the annual budget and local government settlement and these will be informed later in 2016 by the spending review.

	FY2007-08	FY 2008-09	FY 2009-10	FY 2010-11	FY 2011-12	FY 2012-13	FY 2013-14	FY 2014-15
Gross Expenditure	£685 million	£721 million	£765 million	£773 million	£792 million	£837 million	£858 million	£887 million

Source: Local Financial Returns - LFR03

The Scottish Government has worked closely with Police Scotland to highlight awareness of the legislative change around licensing of air weapons, which opens on 1 July 2016. The first stage of the public information campaign has been to support Police Scotland’s ‘SurrendAir’ campaign for unwanted weapons, which ran from 23 May 2016 to 12 June 2016.

The government spending on this was as follows:

(a) Print advertising - Nil

(b) Broadcast advertising - £18,337.19

(c) Marketing materials - £412.81

Police Scotland’s ‘SurrendAir’ campaign ran from 23 May 2016 to 12 June 2016, with 72 designated police offices around the country accepting unwanted air weapons in advance of licensing opening on 1 July 2016. During the three week initiative the police collected 11,569 air weapons.

The divisional breakdown of weapons surrendered is as follows:

Division.	Area	Number of weapons surrendered
A	North East	1,562
C	Forth Valley	800
D	Tayside	1,018
E	Edinburgh	616
G	Greater Glasgow	1,020
J	Lothian and Borders	1,210
K	Renfrewshire and Inverclyde	470
L	Argyll and West Dunbartonshire	517
N	Highlands and Islands	1,287
P	Fife	784
Q	Lanarkshire	933
U	Ayrshire	739
V	Dumfries and Galloway	613

Police Scotland will continue to accept unwanted air weapons until licensing is fully in force from 31 December 2016.

The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) is responsible for the setting and marking of exam papers. It has robust processes in place to ensure that papers and marking instructions are accurate and set to the correct standard.

Each year, SQA considers in detail the experience of the exam diet across all qualifications, and introduces any modifications considered necessary. The SQA board, appointed by Scottish Ministers, receives regular updates on all aspects of the diet.

In 2015, the former Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning wrote to the Chair of SQA to seek additional assurances on SQA processes, and subsequently met with the Chief Executive of SQA to review progress. I will also be meeting Dr Janet Brown, the Chief Executive of SQA, on a monthly basis.

Scottish Government officials regularly meet with SQA to discuss progress throughout the year on a range of SQA activities.

The approach to national standardised assessment as set out in the National Improvement Framework was developed after extensive engagement with teachers, parents, children and academics. We have drawn evidence from a range of advice and publications, particularly from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – specifically their publication Synergies for Better Learning: An International Perspective on Evaluation and Assessment and Education Policy Outlook 2015.

Many local authorities already use standardised assessment at primary 1 (P1). For example, over 1,100 schools in Scotland use the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring’s Performance Indicators in Primary Schools assessment to assess the progress children make in P1 in early maths, early literacy and non-cognitive development and behaviour. Schools find this information useful to ensure the right support is in place to secure good outcomes for children.

It is important to note that the assessments are not tests or exams. They are designed to create an understanding of how children are progressing. All children will not need to sit the assessments on the same day but at a time when the teacher thinks it will be most helpful to assess a child’s progress. Assessments will also be age-appropriate so for example, the needs of children in P1 and their early stage of vocabulary and development will be taken into account in the design.

Recruitment of teachers is a matter for local authorities. In recognition of the challenges faced by local authorities in relation to teacher recruitment, the Scottish Government launched its 'Inspiring Teachers' recruitment campaign in September 2015, with an initial focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects, including computing. We are currently considering how best to build on that in the future.

The Scottish Government conducts an annual teacher workforce planning exercise, in partnership with other stakeholders, to project the minimum requirements for the number of newly trained teachers. This exercise involves analysis of the teacher workforce details, including the age profile of the profession, and local intelligence relating to teacher supply and demand. Subject-specific targets have been set for secondary subjects, including computing, since academic year 2014-15.

This information is not held centrally.

Prior to academic year 2014-15, student teacher intake targets for Professional Graduate Diploma in Education secondary programmes of initial teacher education were not set on a subject specific basis. The table indicates the targets set and intakes to computing in 2014-15 and 2015-16.

2014-15

2015-16

Target	Intake	Target	Intake
25	22	37	20

The target for 2016-17 has been significantly increased to 57.