The membership of the Cabinet Sub-Committee for the Promise will be drawn from key members of the Cabinet with a portfolio interest relevant to the matters under consideration. The first meeting of the Sub-Committee will take place when the membership and remit have been confirmed.

The Strategic Board for Teacher Education met on 4 September to consider their workplan including recruitment and retention issues. This work is ongoing and will be complemented by the project I am commissioning on education workforce modelling and research, which will be completed by the end of the year. The SBTE will use findings from the education workforce modelling and research project provide me with further advice on initial teacher education programmes.

The Scottish government collects and publishes data on school exclusions every other year. The most recent exclusion statistics for looked after children by setting can be found in the 2020-21 Education Outcomes for Looked After Children Report. The results from 2019 onwards are provided in the following table.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-21034 on 15 September 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 Scottish Government is committed to upholding high standards of environmental protection. The statutory guidance on Scotland’s Guiding Principles on the Environment will help ensure that these high standards are maintained through the policy development process. Once the duty to give due regard to the environmental principles comes into force later in the year, Ministers will be legally required to consider these principles in the development of new policies, including through the Strategic Environmental Assessment process. This requirement will encompass policies within the new agricultural policy framework. We have committed in our Programme for Government to ‘continue the Agricultural Reform Programme to produce more of our food sustainably, cut carbon emissions, and farm with nature, by increasing the uptake of carbon audits, soil testing, and biodiversity audits and funding to improve animal health’.

The Scottish Government does not gather or hold any data on the reading age of school children.

Scotland’s flagship 1140 policy is the most generous childcare offer in the UK, delivering high quality early learning and childcare to thousands of families.

Intergenerational working has a role to play in both primary and secondary schools as part of volunteering and cross-community support for the curriculum, learning and teaching.

It is right that schools and local authorities determine whether and in what ways, intergenerational working is incorporated in school level curricula. Scottish Government and national partners provide support, including in the following ways:

• Generations Working Together (GWT) was established with Scottish Government support in 2007 as a nationally recognised centre of excellence supporting the development and integration of intergenerational work across Scotland. GWT has developed a strong multi-faceted model of working to raise awareness of what constitutes good intergenerational practice and has developed local intergenerational networks, training opportunities and a library of materials/resources to support and inspire organisations and partners to take action and enhance their intergenerational practice. A wide range of organisations, including schools and education authorities, access advice and support from GWT.
• The Raising Aspirations in Science Education programme, which aims to ignite a passion for science in primary school pupils, supports family run events along with science festivals designed to engage different generations.
• Some local authorities and schools have chosen to use Scottish Attainment Challenge or Pupil Equity Funding to develop intergenerational practice, alongside a range of other innovative and community-based approaches, as part of their overall approach to raising attainment and narrowing the poverty related attainment gap.

In Programme for Government we committed to providing the necessary funding to enable childcare workers delivering funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) in the Private, Voluntary and Independent (PVI) sector to be paid at least £12 per hour from April 2024. That includes childminders.

A communication issued to the sector on 6 September setting out more details on the commitment. This confirmed that the Scottish Government will work with COSLA and local authorities to support the implementation of this commitment and will set out further details in the coming months.

It is anticipated that payment to support delivery of this commitment will be provided through the sustainable rate setting process, as is currently the case for the ELC real Living Wage commitment.

The details of the Cabinet Sub-Committee are currently being determined.