Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government has not made any specific economic assessment of the costs of late diagnosis or failure to diagnose dyslexia in individuals or across society as a whole.

Our emphasis is on the provision of free, effective support in educational settings including schools, colleges and universities.

The Additional Support for Learning Act 2004 places duties on education authorities to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils. We are also committed to supporting teachers and school staff to meet these needs.

As part of our national approach to dyslexia, we have developed a range of free professional learning opportunities for teachers, which are aimed at supporting them to further develop their knowledge, understanding and skills in supporting learners with dyslexia and to reduce barriers to learning. This includes the Addressing Dyslexia Toolkit ( https://www.dyslexiascotland.org.uk/addressing-dyslexia-toolkit ), its dyslexia identification pathway and the free Dyslexia Inclusive Practice online professional learning modules for staff.

Employment support is also available to adults with dyslexia. This includes access to work support which does not require a formal assessment of dyslexia. In 2020-21 people with learning difficulties accounted for 46% of the disabled people supported through modern apprenticeships.

The Scottish Government is taking a range of actions to support people with dyslexia. This includes the provision of support for dyslexic learners from nursery through school and into further and higher education, and access to support when entering employment, as well as in the workplace.

The Additional Support for Learning Act 2004 places duties on education authorities to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils, including those with dyslexia. The cost of individual supports will vary according to the needs of each pupil.

The Scottish Funding Council’s Access and Inclusion Fund is used to support the teaching and learning of disabled students in Further Education, which includes dyslexia. In 2021-22, £51.8m worth of support was allocated. Additional funding is also available as part of the Student Support budget.

In addition, the Disabled Students’ Allowance supports disabled students and those with additional learning needs in Higher Education. In the 2021-22 academic year, over 2,000 students with dyslexia received support amounting to £3.5 million.

Dyslexia Scotland provide a range of support, initiatives and advice for those with dyslexia, their families and those who support or work with them. In 2022-23, the Scottish Government provided funding to Dyslexia Scotland of over £250,000 to support this work.

The Scottish Government will publish the final Purpose and Principles for post-school education, research and skills [the week commencing 26 June DATE TBC].

The Scottish Government remains committed to reducing inequalities across all screening programmes. That is why we have supported the Equity in Screening strategy, which will give direction and focus to tackling this issue across all screening programmes. However, we also recognise that Health Boards are most often best placed to find solutions that meet the needs of their populations, and we have allocated inequalities funding since 2021-22 to support local initiatives.

This funding has played a part in a programme of work in Ayrshire and Arran to tackle inequalities of uptake in cervical screening. In particular the Health Board has developed a targeted Health Board cervical screening clinic for women who have experienced sexual violence, or who have physical disabilities; They have also run additional Saturday clinics, particularly in areas of deprivation, to increase access to screening outside working hours.

In addition, Primary Care staff have directly contacted patients who have not taken up their screening invitations to offer appointments. Further work is underway with primary care to consider outreach work for 23/24, which will specifically take into account the needs of areas with highest depravation within the Health Board.

The majority of funding allocated to the Drug Deaths Taskforce was dispersed via Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) and The Corra Foundation. The Taskforce also funded the Digital Inclusion Project.

Alcohol and Drug Partnerships received additional funding in 2020-2021 and
‎ 2021-2022 from the Drug Deaths Taskforce.In order to receive funding ADPs were required to submit a proposal, clearly setting out how they would use this funding to address gaps in delivering the Taskforce’s six evidence-based strategies to help reduce drug-related deaths. Funding allocated to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships is subject to Scottish Government’s robust grant management process, outlined in the Scottish Public Finance Manual (SPFM). The SPFM provides guidance on the proper handling and reporting of public funds.

Through The Corra Foundation, a Research Programme Fund and an Innovation Fund was developed by the Drug Deaths Taskforce. The Corra Foundation facilitated review panels with members from a wide range of backgrounds, including those with lived experience, to review and consider applications made to both the Research Programme Fund and the Innovation Fund. The funds were created to contribute to the evidence base to inform future actions.

Monitoring of the projects was managed by The Corra Foundation. Monitoring and evaluation were a critical element in obtaining funding. When funding was awarded, each grantee signed grant offer paperwork which contained several conditions. These included conditions around payment and reporting. The content of the grant offer letters (including the conditions) were agreed with Scottish Government for each round and new conditions added as required. Additionally, a thematic evaluation was funded by the Taskforce through the Corra Foundation.

The independent Drug Deaths Taskforce concluded in July 2022 after publishing its final report, Changing Lives . The Scottish Government then responded to the recommendations and actions put forward by the Taskforce within the Drug Deaths Taskforce response: cross government approach .

Based on Ofcom’s latest figures up to the end of January 2023, 5% of all residences in Scotland do not currently have access to a superfast broadband connection of 30 Mbps (megabits per second) or more.

Through the R100 programme, all premises without access to superfast broadband are being supported to obtain an improved broadband connection - either through inclusion in the R100 contract build plans, or via eligibility for the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme.

Some people choose not to upgrade to faster broadband speeds, even when they are available to them, with Ofcom estimating that only 71% of premises in Scotland take up superfast broadband service when it is available.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-18902 on 22 June 2023. 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

The R100 programme is expected to be completed by March 2028 when the final connections in the R100 North contract are delivered.

Around 99% of the connections being delivered through the R100 contracts are full-fibre, capable of delivering speeds of 1,000 Megabits per second (Mbps) – more than 30 times faster than our original superfast commitment.

Data on the number of people accessing alcohol treatment services in Scotland is available from Public Health Scotland’s “National Drug and Alcohol Treatment Waiting Times” series of reports. It includes specific figures on the number of service users who have completed a wait to commence specialist alcohol treatment.

It is published by Public Health Scotland and covers the period from 01 April 2011 onwards as earlier data is not available.

The reports covering the period from April 2011 to September 2019 can be found via the URL link below:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Drugs-and-Alcohol-Misuse/Publications/ .

The reports covering the period from October 2019 to December 2022 can be found via the URL link below:

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Drugs-and-Alcohol-Misuse/Publications/

Although the data is publicly available online, in order to answer the above question, it is necessary to combine extracts from multiple reports. Results have been presented in Table 1. Not all necessary data, however, is available to answer the question fully, which explains blank boxes in the table.

Table 1. Number of service users who have completed a wait to commence specialist alcohol treatment

We do not hold this information in the Transport Scotland injury road collisions database. We only have information about whether an animal was involved in a collision on the carriageway and we only collect information about the severity of people who are injured in the collision.