Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not provide Scottish domiciled students with doctoral research loans.

Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of Scottish domiciled students accessing doctoral loans for universities out with Scotland.

The Scottish Government recognises that Scotland’s world class university research and its key outputs of new knowledge and insights, including the researchers who contribute to this excellence, are fundamental to Scottish society, economy and the environment.

We have prioritised funding to continue to support high-quality research and innovation across Scotland, increasing the investment in HE core funding for research by £11.3m (3.6%) for Academic Year 2025-26 to £328.5m to maintain and strengthen our research excellence. This includes investing £39.1m (increase of 3.1%) in the form of the Research Postgraduate Grant, providing an underpinning of support for institutions to attract, develop and nurture the next generation of world-class research talent in Scotland. Universities can use this grant to:

• Invest in a collaborative environment for research training and development that values positive culture, inclusivity and exposure to high-quality research as central to the postgraduate research experience; and
• Secure a pipeline of skilled postgraduate researchers, including at doctoral level, and support their career development in a way that meets the needs of academia, industry and society.

We are also investing money to support a critical mass of excellence by investing in a series of Alliances for Research Challenges, Innovation Centres, Interface and Converge, providing long-term support to the research sector in driving industry engagement, leveraging investment and promoting research skills development/ career development.

At this time the Scottish Government has no plans to review or revise our funding model for doctoral level study.

Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of postgraduate places that have been offered at Scottish universities.

Information on the number of students enrolled on postgraduate courses is published by the Scottish Funding Council annually. Latest publication: Higher Education Students and Qualifiers at Scottish Institutions 2023-24 - Scottish Funding Council.

The circumstances in which independent GP contractors can charge their patients for services not covered by their contracts are set out in schedule 5 of the National Health Service (General Medical Services Contracts) (Scotland) Regulations 2018 (box brackets and ellipsis denote edits to the text of the schedule for the sake of clarity):

1. The contractor may demand or accept a fee or other remuneration—

(a) from any statutory body for services rendered for the purposes of that body’s statutory functions;

(b) from any body, employer or school for a routine medical examination of persons for whose welfare the body, employer or school is responsible, or an examination of such persons for the purpose of advising the body, employer or school of any administrative action they might take;

(c) for treatment which is not primary medical services or otherwise required to be provided under the contract and which is given—

(i) pursuant to the provisions of section 57 of [the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978] (a) (accommodation and services for private patients); or

(ii) in accommodation provided by a care home service which is not providing services under the Act,

if, in either case, the person providing the treatment is serving on the staff of a hospital providing services under the Act as a specialist providing treatment of the kind the patient requires and if, within 7 days of giving the treatment, the contractor or the person providing the treatment supplies the Health Board, on a form provided by it for the purpose, with such information about the treatment as it may require;

(d) under section 158 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (payment for emergency treatment of traffic casualties) (b);

(e) when the contractor treats a patient [who claims to be on that contractor’s list of patients, but the contractor has reasonable doubts about that person’s claim], in which case the contractor is entitled to demand and accept a reasonable fee … for any treatment given, if the contractor gives the patient a receipt;

(f) for attending and examining (but not otherwise treating) a patient—

(i) at the patient’s request at a police station in connection with possible criminal proceedings against the patient;

(ii) at the request of a commercial, educational or not-for-profit organisation for the purpose of creating a medical report or certificate; or

(iii) for the purpose of creating a medical report required in connection with an actual or potential claim for compensation by the patient;

(g) for treatment consisting of an immunisation for which no remuneration is payable by the Health Board and which is requested in connection with travel abroad;

(h) for prescribing or providing drugs, medicines or appliances (including a collection of such drugs, medicines and appliances in the form of a travel kit) which a patient requires to have in their possession solely in anticipation of the onset of an ailment or occurrence of an injury while they are outside the United Kingdom but for which they are not requiring treatment when the medicine is prescribed;

(i) for a medical examination—

(i) to enable a decision to be made as to whether or not it is inadvisable on medical grounds for a person to wear a seat belt; or

(ii) for the purpose of creating a report—

(aa) relating to a road traffic accident or criminal assault; or

(bb) that offers an opinion as to whether a patient is fit to travel; or

(j) for prescribing or providing drugs or medicines for malaria chemoprophylaxis.

It is a matter for independent GP contractors to decide whether or not they want to carry out this private work and how much to charge for it.

The Scottish Government does not collect or hold this data centrally.

We expect children and young people who need inpatient mental health care to be looked after in age-appropriate specialist facilities. However, there may be occasions when it isn’t possible for a young person to be admitted to a specialist child and adolescent bed – for example, a crisis admission out of hours where there are concerns for the young person’s safety, or where a specialist facility might be a considerable distance from family support which may aid recovery.

When young people need to be admitted to a non-specialist ward, clinicians will work with the young person and their family to make the most appropriate decision regarding the treatment and support that a young person requires.

On occasions where young people are placed within an adult ward this will be monitored and reviewed regularly to ensure that the young person is receiving the most appropriate treatment and care.

The table below contains the requested data concerning the number of children and young people who have received treatment for an eating disorder in each year from 1999-2023, broken down by NHS Board. The latest year in the time range is 2023, which is the most recent year for which data has been finalised.

The Scottish Government does not collect or hold this data centrally.

Public Health Scotland holds information on NHS patients treated in non-NHS healthcare facilities. 14 children and young people received treatment for an eating disorder in non-NHS healthcare facilities in the period from 1999 to 2023.

When broken down by Health Board and calendar year, the numbers involved are small enough to require suppression. This answer therefore does not include these breakdowns and reports only the total number.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-39135 on 31 July 2025. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

Specific data on staffing expenditure from Pupil Equity Funding in schools, broken down by local authority, is not held centrally.

Since Pupil Equity Funding’s introduction in 2017-18, over £1billion has been allocated to Scotland’s schools, empowering headteachers to take the best approaches that suit the needs of their pupils, including using it to support significant numbers of additional staff, to help close the poverty-related attainment gap. Scottish Attainment Challenge funding, which includes annual Pupil Equity Funding of £130 million to 97% of schools, supports up to 3,000 additional staff, including up to 700 FTE teachers.

Across the country we continue to trust and empower Scotland's headteachers to use this extra funding to support their pupils - whether through extra support staff, family link workers or through support for mental health, for example. The recently published PEF Report highlights some of the ways Headteachers are investing their funding to improve outcomes for children impacted by poverty:- pupil_equity_funding_report_2025_.pdf

Data on how much each local authority spends on agency staff is not held or collected by the Scottish Government. It is the responsibility of local authorities to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including setting school budgets, on the basis of local needs and priorities, after fulfilling their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

Data on local authority expenditure on teachers is available from the Local Government Financial statistics data collection. The latest figures are available from LFR01 at https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-local-government-finance-statistics-slgfs-2023-24-workbooks/.

Teachers in Scotland are employed by local authorities, not agencies. This includes supply teachers and teachers on short term contracts.