Chamber and committees

Progress is continuing on a fully integrated National Health and Social Care Integrated Workforce Plan, setting out our priorities for the health and social care workforce Scotland will require for the future. As with the previous three parts of the National Plan, we are working with stakeholders to ensure their views are fully and carefully considered and reflected. The Integrated Plan is being co-produced and will be jointly published with COSLA later this year.

STEM Bursary Scheme The Scottish Government has included home economics in the STEM bursary scheme which allows students to obtain a bursary of £20,000 to study for a PGDE in home economics. Home economics is the only subject in the curriculum which can address issues around food in the twenty first century and give young people the knowledge, skills, capabilities and attributes they need to make informed, healthy food choices now and in the future.

Scottish Government has worked with GTCS and Initial Teacher Education Establishments to promote Home Economics as a viable career pathway and to increase significantly the number of Home Economics PGDE places available for students as an emerging trend of alternative routes into teaching.

Scottish Government working with Education Scotland has promoted the bursary scheme through the Home Economics Lead Officer (HELO) network who have direct links to Head Teachers and Education Managers. This network is key to the promotion of Home Economics in Scottish schools with the intention of increasing the number of Home Economics teachers across Scotland over the next few years.

Food for Thought Fund 2012 – 2021

The Food for Thought Fund gives financial support to develop food and health as a context for learning. The fund aims to improve practitioner confidence in providing progressive, high quality, skills based learning experiences which help to embed food education into the ethos of the establishment.

Through Food for Thought funding we are inviting practitioners and school leaders to make the most of the opportunities that exist and to take forward actions that a lack of resources had previously inhibited.

Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) provides a broad set of national guidance to support schools in developing their curriculum. However, the specific content of teaching programme is decided by schools and local authorities in order to meet children’s and young people’s needs at local level.

Guidance on teaching of Nutrition and healthy eating comes under Food and Health in the Health and Wellbeing Experiences and Outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence beginning in Early Years, continuing through primary school and delivered predominantly via Home Economics in secondary schools. The Health and Wellbeing Experience’s and outcomes and Benchmarks are a set of clear and concise statements about children's learning and progression in each subject area, including Food and Health/Home Economics. They are used to help plan learning and to assess progress.

https://education.gov.scot/Documents/health-and-wellbeing-eo.pdf .

Curriculum for Excellence outlines the entitlement for children and young people to experience a number of Broad General Education Experiences and Outcomes from 3-15 education beginning at early learning and child care stage and continuing through primary school right up to S4-S6.

Benchmarks make clear what learners need to know and be able to do to progress through the levels, and to support consistency in teachers’ and other practitioners’ professional judgements .

Food education permeates every area of the curriculum and is a great context for real life learning. Learning to cook is a skill for life. The Good Food Skills resource supports practitioners with information & activities in relation to the classroom management and teaching of practical food education and skills from early level to fourth level. The importance of Home Economics teachers within secondary schools should be emphasised in relation to building on prior learning from primary school experiences, and teaching combined health, nutrition and practical skills.

The resource will build knowledge and understanding appropriate for every level and offers a skills progression framework with suggested recipes which match the skill set of learners at every level. This will ensure highly effective teaching & learning experiences for children and young people relating to practical food education.

As set out in the answer to S5W-21243 on 5 February 2019, the “People, Past Events and Societies” element of the curriculum provides teachers with the flexibility to choose topics which meet the needs of their pupils and this can include learning and teaching about the transatlantic slave trade. The educational resources referred to in the previous answer included issues relating to human trafficking and exploitation today as well as the transatlantic slave trade in order to help young people understand that lessons from the past are not always learned from in society today and that people of all races and genders are still exploited in our modern world. Education Scotland provide such resources to support teachers in helping pupils develop a balanced and informed understanding of past people and events, their impact on how our society has developed and lessons for our future. It is up to teachers to decide whether and how to use these resources in their learning and teaching.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The Housing First Pathfinder Programme is a partnership between the Scottish Government, Corra Foundation, Glasgow Homelessness Network and Social Bite.

Heriot Watt University have been appointed to undertake a full and independent evaluation of the Housing First Pathfinder Programme. This will include participation from across each of the local authorities involved, front line service providers including third sector organisations, and also service users. In addition Glasgow Homelessness Network are publishing a monthly tenancy tracker to chart progress and high level outcomes. The tracker is published monthly at: http://www.ghn.org.uk/shien/housing-first/housing-first-tracker/ .

The Housing First approach ensures those with multiple and complex needs are allocated settled accommodation with the intensive support they may need, individually tailored and provided to them in these mainstream tenancies, rather than through supported accommodation to develop 'tenancy readiness'. Typically an individual who has addictions issues would qualify.

At the end of March 2019 a total of 56 Housing First tenancies had started across the five pathfinder cities participating in the programme.

The Scottish Government believes all women in Scotland should have access to clinically safe and legal abortion services, within the limits that are currently set down in law, should they require it. It is our view that abortion care should be part of standard healthcare provisions, free from stigma. We continue to work with NHS boards on the provision and further improvement of abortion services across Scotland.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that abortion services in Scotland are all-inclusive and accessible to all individuals, regardless of disabilities, age, gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity. Services should meet the needs of individuals in a person-centred and respectful way.

Whilst we are determined to learn from our past and the role Scotland played in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, our efforts at the present time are focused on ensuring we deliver positive outcomes for the minority ethnic people of Scotland now. This work is being carried out through the Race Equality Action Plan and Race Equality Framework which sets out our approach to promoting race equality and tackling racism and inequality between 2016 and 2030.