Chamber and committees

In 2025-26. the Scottish Government allocated £3m to deliver a Test of Change for those in receipt of Scottish Child Payment in secondary 1 to 3. The Test of Change has been providing nutritious meals for up to 6100 newly eligible pupils across 60 schools in 8 local authorities since August 2025 and will run until the end of June 2026.

Following an open tender Ipsos have been appointed to carry out an independent evaluation of the Test of Change. This work involves researchers seeking the views on a variety of subjects linked to the creation and delivery of the Test of Change from stakeholders, including pupils, parents and staff across all 8 partner local authorities.

The research also considers the uptake of free school meals during the Test of Change, including any factors that may have encouraged or been a barrier to eligible pupils taking a meal.

A full report is expected to be published during autumn 2026. The research findings will help inform future phases of the Free School Meals Programme.

While the recruitment and deployment of teachers is the responsibility of local authorities, the Scottish government takes concerns about the recruitment and retention of teachers very seriously.

The Scottish Government conducts an annual teacher workforce planning exercise, at a national level, to forecast the need for newly registered teachers, consulting key stakeholders through the Teacher Workforce Planning Advisory Group (TWPAG). TWPAG, which includes representatives from local authorities, universities, GTCS, teacher unions, COSLA and SFC, recommends intake targets to Ministers.

This process is informed by a statistical model incorporating factors such as pupil projections, teacher turnover, post-probation employment rates, and ITE retention, supplemented by stakeholder input.

Local authorities, as the employers of teachers, are responsible for their own recruitment and hiring processes. Local authorities have a duty to ensure they advertise teaching vacancies through open and fair recruitment processes, in line with all public sector employers.

The Scottish Government does not monitor or interfere with the recruitment practices of local authorities, however we are working with COSLA on medium and long-term joint workforce planning, which will take into account the importance of responding to issues such as the consistency of teacher recruitment and advertising of posts.

Teaching posts are advertised throughout the year and details of current vacancies can be found at: myjobscotland.gov.uk.

Any changes to existing funded early learning and childcare arrangements will be a matter for an incoming government to address.

There has been no specific modelling carried out on how this proposal would support the retention of multiple-birth parents in the workforce.

The impact of deprivation on attainment is well understood and addressed through the Strategic Attainment Challenge Programme. The Scottish Government implements a range of policies, including Free School Meals, to mitigate the impact of poverty on pupils, support readiness to learn and contribute to the aims of the Scottish Attainment Challenge to close the poverty-related attainment gap. Taken together, these measures form part of our wider approach to equity in education and support our ongoing work to close the poverty-related- attainment gap. A summative evaluation report on the Scottish Attainment Challenge was published on 17 March, highlighting significant system-wide progress in embedding a culture of equity in Scotland’s education system and can be accessed on gov.scot.

While the Scottish Government does not evaluate the impact of Free School Meals on attainment, it does collect annual data on the number of registrations and uptake of meals, which are published on gov.scot. This helps inform decisions on future expansion of the programme.

Individual Local Authorities, as employers, are responsible for managing teaching vacancies and providing job opportunities across Scotland. Teaching vacancies are advertised across Scotland, throughout the year, through a process of fair and open recruitment. Local authorities must balance the teaching jobs they advertise with their local needs and contexts, including the type of contracts and posts they make available.

The Scottish Government collects and publishes annual data on the number of teachers employed across Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities through the Annual Teacher Census. This data can be accessed at: https://www.gov.scot/collections/school-education-statistics/

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of teacher permanence, and the stability and assurance this brings to teachers. That is why we continue to invest £186.5 million to help restore teacher numbers. We continue to work closely with COSLA on medium and long-term joint workforce planning, which will take into account the importance of responding to issues such as teacher permanence.

Local authorities have the statutory responsibility to manage their school estate, and determining appropriate Pupil Product Ratios (PPR). The Scottish Government does not hold national data comparing pupil yields with PPR assumptions, however, the Determining Primary School Capacity guidance supports local authorities in using locally derived evidence within their planning models. Any review of PPRs in light of future census data remains a matter for each authority.

I refer the Member to the answer to question S6W-41594 on 10 November 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

Public Health Scotland (PHS) will publish waiting times data covering the period up to 31 March 2026 on 28 April 2026.

PHS uses the national waiting times datamart to collect electronic patient records covering the waits that patients experience waiting for treatment as an inpatient or day case under the Treatment Time Guarantee. This data source can be used routinely to identify the specialty of treatment. However, although the records are designed to collect coded information on the procedure that is planned for the patient, this information is often either incomplete, lacking in essential detail and/or its accuracy cannot be assured. In addition, for patients who have completed their wait the procedures that was planned may not always reflect the procedure actually performed after they were admitted for treatment. The latter is not captured through the national data mart. Consequently, information on the average waiting time for surgery for endometriosis or fibroids is not available at a sub-speciality level.

Since 2021, the Scottish Government has invested over £5.3 million into Welfare Advice and Health Partnerships (WAHPs), supporting delivery of welfare rights advice within participating GP Practices. Building on the evidence from the WAHPs, since 2023 we have spent £4.7 million on our Advice in Accessible settings Fund which supports partnership working and improving the availability of advice services within a range of community, health and education settings.

As set out in the new Tackling Child Poverty Plan published on 12 March 2026, the Scottish Government is investing more than £27 million over the next two years in welfare, income maximisation and debt advice services. Multi-year grants will help provide stability and certainty for the sector, including improving staff retention and we expect these services to support at least 80,000 households each year. The plan also commits to providing funding of £6 million for the Advice in Accessible Settings Fund by the end of 2028-29, which we expect will support over 7,500 people each year.

The Plan also sets out how we intend to make good quality advice and support on income maximisation more easily available by sharing existing best practice more widely and working with education, health and advice sectors to review how to sustainably embed advice in schools.

Whilst the Scottish Government is one of the biggest single funders of national advice services in Scotland, the primary funder of locally based advice services remains local authorities and it is for local authorities to decide how best to meet the needs of their local communities through the decisions they make for services within their area.