Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not hold information on total payroll costs centrally. This would be a matter for individual public bodies.

However, we do collect projected and actual paybill costs for those employees within public bodies covered by the Scottish Government’s Public Sector Pay Policy for Staff Pay Remits. The total projected paybill (salary plus on-costs: National Insurance Contributions, pensions, allowances, etc.) for these employees is estimated to be £1.4 billion for 2016-17. This estimate excludes the paybill costs for senior appointments such as the Chief Executive, non-executive directors and all Senior Civil Service appointments because they are not covered by the Pay Policy for Staff Pay Remits.

A list of those public bodies covered by the Scottish Government’s Public Sector Pay Policy is available at http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Government/public-sector-pay/staff-pay/public-bodies-covered.

Estimates of these costs for future years are dependent upon the Pay Policy in place at the time; decisions taken on National Insurance Contributions and employers’ pension contributions by the UK Government; decisions on recruitment and workforce planning taken by individual public bodies; and decisions individual bodies take on their annual pay remits, following engagement with trade unions. The 2017-18 Public Sector Pay Policy will be announced alongside the draft budget statement on 15 December.

The Scottish Government welcomes international scrutiny of the education system, and the Scottish Government participates in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The programme runs every three years across all OECD members and a variety of partner countries. Scotland has participated in all six surveys since the first wave of testing in 2000. PISA aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students, with a particular focus on maths, reading and science.

The OECD published the results of the 2015 survey on 6 December 2016 and, on the same date, the Scottish Government published a report focussing on the Scottish results and how they compare internationally http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/12/7252. The next survey will take place in 2018, with the results available in December 2019.

The Scottish Government participates in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The programme runs every three years across all OECD members and a variety of partner countries, and aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students, with a particular focus on maths, reading and science. Scotland has participated in all six surveys since the first wave of testing in 2000.

The OECD published the results of the 2015 survey on 6 December 2016 and, on the same date, the Scottish Government published a report focussing on the Scottish results and how they compare internationally http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/12/7252. The next survey will take place in 2018, with the results available in December 2019.

We do not carry out an international comparison of the performance of primary school pupils. We took the decision in 2010 to limit our participation in international surveys to PISA in order to reduce the bureaucratic burden on teachers and pupils, and because we felt PISA provides an effective indicator of how the whole Scottish education system is performing relative to other countries.

The Scottish Government welcomes international scrutiny of the education system, and participates in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The programme runs every three years across all OECD members and a variety of partner countries, and aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students, with a particular focus on maths, reading and science. Scotland has participated in all six surveys since the first wave of testing in 2000.

The OECD published the results of the 2015 survey on 6 December 2016 and, on the same date, the Scottish Government published a report focussing on the Scottish results and how they compare internationally http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2016/12/7252. The next survey will take place in 2018, with the results available in December 2019.

As reported in the Financial Review, we estimate that there were around 16,000 two year olds entitled to free early learning and childcare in Scotland in 2015 under the terms of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. This does not include those children receiving free ELC under the terms of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 or those children who receive free ELC based on local priorities. Our Scotland-level estimate is based on information from various sources most of which are not disaggregated to local authority level.

a) Looked after children (including children formally looked after in kinship care but not those subject to a Kinship Care Order) - The table below contains a breakdown of looked after 2 year olds entitled to free ELC by local authority. Figures are rounded to the nearest 10. Some of these children may also qualify under other criteria eg because their parents receive qualifying benefits.

b) Kinship Care Orders / Guardianship - We do not collect data on 2 year olds eligible for free ELC through kinship care orders or guardianship. As explained in the Financial Review, to derive the estimate of overall two year old eligibility, we estimated that looked after children, children under kinship care orders and children in guardianship combined were around 3 per cent of the population and that the total population is around 60,000. Some of these children may also qualify under other criteria eg because their parents receive qualifying benefits. We estimate that this applies to 70 per cent.

c) Qualifying benefits – Information on households in receipt of qualifying benefits is held by Department for Work and Pensions and by HMRC. They do not provide the relevant information on two year olds to Scottish Government at a local authority level. For Scotland as a whole, we estimate that around 15,200 two-year olds are eligible for free ELC because they live in a household in receipt of qualifying benefits.

d) In need / local priorities - Scottish Government does not collect data on the number of children entitled to free ELC under the terms of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 or those children who receive free ELC based on local priorities.

We do not routinely collect information on the number of children who are registered with more than one provider. We contacted local authorities in June 2015 to ask them to provide data which would allow us to estimate the double count of registrations for 3 and 4 year olds. From the information received, we estimated that around 2 per cent of children are registered with more than one provider.

ELC inspection numbers - Financial year April to March - All published April 2011 to March 2016

The Scottish Government does not hold information about how many children have been identified at birth as being disabled. The data that is available is from the 2011 Census, which relates to people with a long-term health problem or disability which limits their day-to-day activities. This data, broken down by age and sex, can be accessed here: www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/ods-web/standard-outputs.html
People with a long-term disability or health problem may have responded in their census questionnaire that their day-to-day activities were not (or, in the case of under 5 year olds, likely judged by their parent/ carer not to be) limited as a result of their disability or health problem.

Under the Education(Additional Support for Learning) Scotland Act 2004 education authorities are required to provide appropriate additional support for certain disabled children under school age (generally children under 3 years of age) belonging to their area who have been brought to the attention of the authority as having additional support needs arising from their disability.

The number of children attending publically funded schools who are reported as having additional support needs is published each year as part of the pupil census. This information is available from Table 1.6 of the pupil census supplementary datasets: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/School-Education/dspupcensus Note that those recorded as having Additional Support Needs includes a broad range of reasons for additional support, from ‘learning disability’ and ‘autistic spectrum disorder’ to ‘bereavement’ and ‘more able pupil’. See Table 1.8 of the supplementary tables for a full list of Reasons for Support.