Chamber and committees

As at October 2023, the Scottish Government’s Health and Social Care Directorates (HSCD) have 8 specialist advisors procured under a Service Level Agreement from NHS Ayrshire and Arran.

The following working groups sit under the remit of the Education and Skills portfolio:

National Response to Improving Mathematics in Scotland Short Life Working Group

National Response to Improving Literacy in Scotland Short Life Working Group

NIF Statutory Guidance Working group

National Transitions to Adulthood Strategy External Strategic Working Group

Scottish Government Cross-policy Working Group on Transitions

Improvement and Regulation Working Group

Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Working Group

Short Life Working Group on Data Sharing in Relation to Student Sexual Misconduct

Access Data Short-Life Working Group

Short Life Working Group on the Scope of the Accreditation and Regulation Function for the New Qualifications Body

Short Life Working Group on Economic and Social Opportunities for Gaelic

The Scottish Government is working closely with NHS Ayrshire and Arran to increase capacity and reduce cancellations. A number of improvement actions to enable the prioritisation of resources to areas where the capacity gap has the greatest impact are already underway, including:

• A bottom-up review of operating capacity within surgical teams;
• Increase resilience of the planned care service through protection of planned care beds to ensure that operations are not cancelled as a result of bed capacity; and
• Introduction of new enhanced roles across the wider multi-disciplinary teams to increase capacity and improve sustainability, such as surgical care practitioners, anaesthesia associates and theatre assistant practitioners.

These actions will help NHS Ayrshire and Arran deliver its plans to increase capacity which include targeted recruitment, extended workforce roles and new models of service delivery.

An Assurance Board was established in December 2022 to monitor and scrutinise NHS Forth Valley against an agreed Improvement Plan. The Assurance Board has met 13 times and continues to meet monthly to review progress.

A copy of the latest Improvement Plan along with the minutes of the Assurance Board meetings are published here: NHS Forth Valley Assurance Board - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The Scottish Government announced the launch of the Young Person’s Guarantee in November 2020, with the aim of protecting young people against the immediate economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Guarantee aimed to ensure every young person between 16 and 24 had the opportunity of a job, apprenticeship, further or higher education, training or volunteering. Between November 2020 and March 2023 we invested over £175m in additional support from Covid-related funding.

We have now mainstreamed this work across Government and, through our championing of the payment of the real Living Wage (which has a higher hourly rate than the National Living Wage), we continue to promote increases in young people’s earnings.

The Scottish Government has provided a total of £4,367,590.00 of grant funding to the Association for Real Change (ARC) Scotland between 1 April 2013-30 September 2023 to support a number of areas of their work. This is broken down per financial year as follows:

The consultation on extending the scope of the 2021 animal licensing regulations closed on 26 September. We are considering all the responses received and will publish a consultation summary report in due course. This report will provide a breakdown of responses and set out our proposed next steps.

The Scottish Government has regular meetings with both College Employers Scotland and the representative campus trade unions, where a number of broad workforce issues are discussed.

Given there is no timeframe set out in your question, I have provided a note of all meetings for the 2023 calendar year where pay and industrial relations within the sector was discussed since I have taken up office as Minister for Higher Education and Further Education.

Between November 2020 and March 2023, awareness of the Young Person’s Guarantee among employability staff was achieved using existing networks and communication channels. There was no funding allocated to the specific promotion of the Young Person’s Guarantee aimed at employability staff.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring our children and young people have access to healthy and nutritious food when at school. The Scottish Government ensure that all food and drink served in education authority and grant aided schools, including free and paid for school meals, meet these high standards through the Nutritional Requirements for food and drink in schools (Scotland) Regulations 2020. The Regulations are based on scientific evidence and dietary advice and designed to ensure children and young people can access an appropriate amount of energy and key nutrients as part of their school day to support their healthy growth and development.

The Regulations require 2 full portions of vegetables and 1 full portion of fruit to be served as part of a primary school lunch and a secondary school analysed lunch, building on the previous standards which required a variety of fruit and vegetables to be on offer but did not specify a required portion size. In addition, portions of fruit and vegetables must be made available in any place within school premises where food is provided at other times of the school day for example morning break provision or tuckshops. Compliance with the Regulations is monitored by Education Scotland Health and Nutrition Inspectors as part of their annual inspection programme.

As set out in our Programme for Government, we will continue to work with local authorities to ensure that school meals meet the highest standards of nutrition, recognising that this is vital to our children’s effective learning.

The Scottish Government is currently working with Local Authorities on the roll out of the next phase of Free School Meal expansion therefore ensuring more of our children and young people are provided the opportunity to benefit from healthy and nutritious meals.

Food and nutrition is an integral part of our national educational curriculum set out in the health and wellbeing experiences and outcomes detailed in Curriculum for Excellence. This will help to ensure that children and young people are provided with the knowledge, skills and experience they need to make positive dietary choices, including why it is important to consume plenty of fruit and vegetables as part of a balanced and nutritious school lunch.