Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is not aware of any recent review by Scottish Borders Council of its additional needs assistant allocation process for secondary schools.

Local authorities retain the statutory responsibility for the delivery of education in Scotland. Decisions around the delivery of additional needs support and the minimum levels of staff to meet local level needs are matters for education authorities.

We have 17,046 pupil support assistants in Scotland – the second highest level on record and an increase of nearly 1,800 since 2020. This is a direct result of our continued investment of £15m each year to help them respond to the individual needs of children and young people and maintains our record levels of investment in these staff.

Funding is provided to Local Authorities by means of a block grant to allow them to allocate the total financial resources available to them, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on additional support needs.

Scottish Government and COSLA work in partnership on additional support needs through the Additional Support for Learning Project Board. The new Education and Childcare Assurance Board provides a further opportunity for jointly agreeing priorities and joint working in this context.

The Scottish Government has no role in reviewing how additional support needs team allocations are determined within local authority secondary schools.

The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act (2004) places duties on Education authorities to identify, make provision for, and review provision for the additional support needs of children and young people for whose education they are responsible.

Funding is provided to Local Authorities by means of a block grant to allow them to allocate the total financial resources available to them, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The Scottish Government is committed to developing a long-term strategic approach to skills and careers in the culture and creative industries sectors across all roles. In 2020 the Culture Strategy for Scotland was clear that if we are to harness Scotland's creative talents and support a diverse talent pipeline to support the future of the sector, it is important we increase access.

Creative Scotland has a wide programme of work focussed on increasing access to culture and creativity, supporting both those who want to engage with activity as audience members and participants and those who want to work in the sector. An external EDI Advisory Group supports this work, which includes:

• partnering with sector organisations to support accessibility to Creative Scotland funds on a localised/sector/network level;
• clarifying eligible costs for personal and project access in funded projects to remove barriers related to disability/communication difference, caring responsibility, mental health and wellbeing;
• partnership working across the UK Arts Councils to develop the All In access card; and
• addressing key driver of inequality and exclusion through work on health and mental health, including the Participatory Arts and Mental Health Fund.

Creative Scotland also monitors the success rates of those applying to its funds, including those accessing their access support services, and evaluated key development work, such as their 'Create:Inclusion' Fund.

The Scottish Government’s long-standing investment of over £150 million since 2007 in programmes such as the Youth Music Initiative and Sistema has made a huge impact helping young people across Scotland access music-making opportunities and develop their wider skills and learning, encouraging and equipping them to enter the talent pipeline if they wish.

Youth Music Initiative has helped young people in all 32 local authorities access music-making with every pupil offered a year’s free music tuition by the end of primary school. It tackles inequalities by providing music making experiences and wider cultural opportunities to children across Scotland, and particularly to those who otherwise would not be able to participate in these activities. Youth Music Initiative received a 3 per cent uplift in 2025-26, which takes the Scottish Government’s annual investment to £9.78 million. Sistema runs Big Noise education programmes across six communities in Scotland and received a 3 per cent uplift in 2025-26, which takes the Scottish Government’s annual investment to £2.68 million. As part of the Fairer Funding Pilot, the Scottish Government has also committed to fund Youth Music Initiative and Sistema at existing levels in 2026-27, further strengthening their sustainability and the talent pipeline.

In assisting individuals to move on from secondary education and further into the talent pipeline for creative industries, the regular skills assessments in the creative industries from Skills Development Scotland identify the specific skills required for various roles and help organisations and individuals understand areas of expertise and potential gaps. These assessments can be used to inform education and training programs, improve workforce development, and support individual career pathways.

The music talent pipeline is already supported through a very significant offer across Scotland’s Colleges at NC, HNC and HND level covering performance, production, sound engineering, music business and event management. There is also increased specialisation at degree level across Scotland’s Higher Education sector, covering classical, contemporary and traditional music disciplines.

More broadly, Creative Scotland plays a major role in talent development and supporting the creative talent pipeline through the National Lottery funded Open Fund for Individuals which offers early career funding to emerging artists. In 2023-24, the Open Fund made 164 awards totalling £4.2 million for leadership training and professional development.

Through their Targeted Routes and organisations funds, Creative Scotland support organisations and events such as Wide Days, the Scottish Alternative Music Awards, Showcase Scotland at Celtic Connections and Made In Scotland Expo, which provide opportunities and mentoring for young acts. Bursaries such as VACMA and the Stephen Palmer Travel Bursary Fund connected visual artists with peers and development opportunities. Go See Share helps creatives explore and share insights from international creative business models.

In the Screen sector, industry training initiatives supported by Screen Scotland include bursaries for the Edinburgh TV Festival, TRC's SuperSizer, Film FastTrack, and Reset 2023, alongside NFTS Scotland’s paid trainee programme and STV Studios’ Screw training scheme in 2023-24, which supported underrepresented entrants into HETV production.

GMAC Film’s Little Pictures and Short Circuit's Sharp Shorts provide vital support for emerging filmmakers. In 2024, Rising Stars Scotland highlighted new film talent, Screen Fringe fostered collaboration between stage and screen industries, and the YFF Skye Screenwriting Residency offered mentorship to aspiring screenwriters.

Supported by the recent uplift in Grant-in-Aid funding from the Scottish Government delivering the largest budget ever available to Creative Scotland, more than £200 million in support, across a broad spread of creative disciplines, is to be provided to 251 organisations over the next three years. The organisations funded through the Multi-Year fund support individuals in many ways – as employees, commissioned artists, programming of work, audiences and participants.

Organisations like Fèisean nan Gidheal and Fèis Rois create access to music opportunities, Alchemy Film and Arts ‘Film Town’ programme provides a year round programme of community filmmaking, skills development and creative learning, from their base in Hawick. Organisations like Shetland Arts and Eden Court, in Inverness, work with the Education sector to deliver educational courses, alongside other opportunities for artists and participants.

In addition The National Culture Strategy Action Plan updates on work to better understand local authority support for culture and explore future models of collaboration between local and national bodies. Research undertaken by Creative Scotland in partnership with Community Leisure UK and SportScotland was published in August 2024 and will further strengthen Creative Scotland’s efforts to work better together in partnership with local authorities, developing a wider understanding on all aspects that contribute to a healthy cultural ecosystem at the local level. Creative Scotland is now planning their next steps for this work, including a programme of engagement with local authorities.

Creative Scotland’s development work also supports various initiatives across Scotland targeted to the needs of the area. For example:

• Through Targeted (Place Partnership) and Open project National Lottery funding, Creative Scotland continues to support the work of the Creative Arts Business Network (CABN) in the Scottish Borders, which aims is to develop the professional creative sector in the Scottish Borders through a diverse programme of support, including mentoring, showcasing and funding; and
• Culture Collective is a Scottish Government supported programme where organisations, artists and communities work together, providing employment opportunities for creative practitioners and actively engaging people in shaping the future cultural life of their community. The programme initially ran from 2021-2024, and £4 million has been included in the 2025-26 budget to continue the programme.

Education authorities are responsible for identifying and meeting the additional support needs of their pupils. They have responsibility for securing appropriate resources, including teaching and support staff, to meet children and young people’s long or short-term needs.

All teachers are responsible for supporting pupils with additional support needs, not just those teachers whose role is specifically related to additional support for learning.

The number of secondary school teachers by main subject is published on the Scottish Government website here: see https://www.gov.scot/publications/teacher-census-supplementarystatistics/.

Statistics on school support staff are published on the Scottish Government website here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-statistics/

The Scottish Government fully values the importance of the music industry to Scotland’s culture and creative industries, and the value grass roots music venues deliver for the economy and the talent pipeline.

Whilst some issues that might assist grassroots music venues are reserved - such as dynamic ticket pricing and VAT rates - the Scottish Budget 2025 announced that music venues with a capacity of up to 1,500 will be eligible for the new 40 per cent hospitality relief from 1 April 2025 where the property meets the other eligibility criteria for this relief, including the £51,000 rateable value threshold which aligns with the threshold for the Basic Property Rate.

Recognising also that live music, of all genres, needs to flourish right across Scotland, 100 per cent relief continues in 2025-26 for hospitality premises, including music venues with a maximum capacity of 1,500 persons, located on islands, and in prescribed remote areas (Cape Wrath, Knoydart, and Scoraig), capped at £110,000 per business.

In addition to hospitality reliefs, the package of reliefs available in 2025-26 also includes the Small Business Bonus Scheme which remains the most generous relief of its kind in the UK. Around half of the properties in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors are expected to be eligible for 100% Small Business Bonus Scheme relief this year.

We encourage grassroots music venues to approach public funding for activity that is additional to their core programming, such as attracting audiences from different marginalised backgrounds through more varied programming.

Ministers will continue to liaise with stakeholders throughout the sector, such as the Music Venues Trust and the Events Industry Advisory Group (EIAG), to discuss challenges facing the industry, and to explore what can be done within our powers and resources to help overcome these.

The Scottish Government has not conducted a formal assessment of the economic and cultural impacts disaggregated to the sub-level of grassroots music venues.

However in August 2024 the Scottish Government Industry Statistics Database estimated the overall Creative Industries sector GVA in 2022 (including digital) as £5,724 million.

Considering cultural attendance at a general level, the latest data from the 2023 Scottish Household Survey shows us that cultural attendance in Scotland is high and has increased since 2022. Attendance at a live music event (at 36 per cent) was the second most common type of event for adults to attend. Within that, attendance at live music events (in venues of all sizes across Scotland) was over four in ten for 16 to 24 year olds (46 per cent), compared with 11 per cent of those aged 75 or over.

As with other sectors in Scotland’s Creative Industries, the Scottish Government also pays careful attention to external, illustrative research undertaken by partners and stakeholders, such as the April 2025 report from the Music Venues Trust.