Chamber and committees

The Co-Production Group had their final meeting in June 2024. The group provided advice on the functions of the Centre and the principles that will underpin its operation.

The host of the Centre will be determined through a competitive grant process which will be assessed in two stages. The first stage of applications for interested Scottish education institutions to apply for funding to set up and host the Centre for Teaching Excellence opened on 9th September 2024 and closed on 7th October 2024. Applicants successful at that first stage will be invited to provide more information at stage two which opens in November 2024.

The intention is to appoint and announce a host of the Centre by the end of 2024.

The latest SQA data shows that the total number of entries into STEM National Qualifications at Higher have increased every year since 2019, with entries in 2024 being 3.4% higher than 2023.

Work has been ongoing since 2017 to implement the STEM Training and Education Strategy, which is designed to ensure ongoing take up of STEM subjects. This includes providing funding to organisations and programmes such as SSERC and the Raising Aspirations in Science Education (RAiSE) Programme, to equip practitioners with the skills, knowledge and confidence to create inspiring STEM learning experiences.

In addition, the Scottish Government funds the Young STEM Leader Programme which inspires young people to take up STEM subjects, as well as initiatives such as Maths Week Scotland which promotes numeracy as an essential life skill.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. Practices must apply to their Health Boards to close their lists and agree the conditions and timelines for reopening them.

Circumstances will arise where GP practices experience capacity issues and are unable to routinely accept new patients onto their lists. We expect Health Boards to work with practices as constructively and as flexibly as is appropriate to help manage these situations and ensure that all patients have access to GP services.

If passed by the Scottish Parliament, the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill will prohibit certain sales of over 1,000 hectares, until Ministers can consider the impact on the local community. Ministerial consideration of a lotting decision and what factors may be expected to make a community more sustainable will be based on the individual circumstances of the landholding and the particular communities in question.

While this assessment will depend on these individual factors, it is anticipated that the assessment of potential contributions to the sustainability of communities would include having regard to high level objectives such as economic development, repopulation, maintenance of populations, regeneration, public health, social wellbeing and environmental wellbeing.

Further information can also be found in my letter to the Convener of Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee: cabsecralriproviding-further-information-following-informal-briefing-on-the-land-reform-bill-14-may.pdf (parliament.scot)

The review of the community rights to buy will look at legislative and procedural changes that can help make those rights more accessible to communities. How, and for what purposes, communities choose to exercise those rights to buy, is a matter for each community to decide. The review will make sure that those rights can be exercised more easily when communities need them.

The Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland series now includes attendance on an annual basis. Headline statistics on school attendance for the 2023-24 school year will be published in December 2024. Detailed statistics on school attendance, including a measure of pupils with an absence rate of 50% or more, will be published in March 2025.

There are no Scottish Government vehicles purchased through loan or credit agreements.

The Scottish Government remain committed to increasing the Scottish Land Fund to £20m by 2026. Annual budgets for the SLF are set as part of the annual budget process.

There are no immediate plans to ask Public Health Scotland (PHS) to expand the content within their Accident and Emergency publications.

Due to data quality and completeness issues, PHS do not publish information on the full list of data items in the A&E dataset, including patient triage category as it would not provide an accurate national picture or meaningful comparisons between NHS Boards.

We continue to work with PHS to ensure that A&E reporting guidance can be applied as consistently as possible across NHS Scotland and publication of data is subject to the necessary data quality and completeness standards being met.

Scottish Government is currently assessing alternative spending models for nature restoration that will seek to encourage greater responsible private investment.

The Scottish Government has not set a target ratio of public to private investment or established a maximum limit that the public purse should pay of any investment with regards to incentivising nature recovery.

Scottish Government’s approach will focus on maximising the value of public spending to achieve the greatest amount of nature restoration and positive environmental outcomes while ensuring communities benefit from this investment.