Chamber and committees

Statistics on additional support for learning teachers are published in the teacher census supplementary statistics, available on the Scottish Government website here:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/teacher-census-supplementary-statistics/

Statistics on pupil support assistants are published in the school support staff statistics, available on the Scottish Government website here:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-statistics/

The Scottish Government is committed to reducing delayed discharges and addressing the variation in delays across the country and this remains a priority for this Government. However, it is important to reflect that 97% of all discharges happen without delay.

The latest published delayed discharge figures show some progress in reducing the number of people delayed, and we continue to work to drive that number down further. Statistics show that during April 2025, on average 1,854 people were delayed in hospital each day, 3% fewer than in April 2024, the lowest level since October 2023, and a 9% reduction from the peak in October 2024.

The progress comes off the back off intensive work that is being done on a whole system basis, with Health and Social Care Partnerships, the National Health Service, Local Government and community and voluntary sector partners – to ensure that capacity is there to support them.

Furthermore, our budget for 2025-26 set out a clear plan to reduce waiting times, delayed discharges and improve hospital flow, supported by £200 million in targeted investment. Underpinning this is the NHS Scotland Operational Improvement Plan which was published on the 31st of March this year. This is a plan to improve access to treatment, shift the balance of care from acute services to the community, and improve access to health and social care services through digital and technological innovation and prevention.

I am confident that this improvement can continue, delivering better outcomes for patients so that they are cared for in the right setting and hospital beds are there for those who need them.

My statement to the Scottish Affairs Committee on 4 June 2025 is based on operational data and the clinical interventions of the Thistle Safer Drug Consumption Facility team.

By the end of April 2025, staff had managed 30 medical emergencies requiring urgent intervention. These incidents involved overdose responses, including naloxone and oxygen administration, in situations where lives were at immediate risk. The evidence underpinning this statement is drawn from Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership’s published service data and the professional assessments of clinical staff on-site to attend to medical emergencies

The three regional cancer networks continue to make operational improvements to service provision across Scotland to reduce ovarian cancer surgery waits. Improvements taken to date include increasing surgery provision, by increasing surgical teams and theatre capacity; improving theatre scheduling and joint working across surgical teams; and expediting pathways to expand capacity for these complex, multidisciplinary surgeries.

According to the most recent published data (October-December 2024), 98.4% of women are receiving their first treatment for ovarian cancer within 31 days of a decision to treat. The maximum wait during this quarter was 43 days, a decrease from 90 days in the same quarter in 2023. This may be a range of treatments, including surgery.

The Scottish Government is committed to developing a long-term strategic approach to skills and careers in the culture and creative industries sectors across all roles. In 2020 the Culture Strategy for Scotland was clear that if we are to harness Scotland's creative talents and support a diverse talent pipeline to support the future of the sector, it is important we increase access.

Creative Scotland has a wide programme of work focussed on increasing access to culture and creativity, supporting both those who want to engage with activity as audience members and participants and those who want to work in the sector. An external EDI Advisory Group supports this work, which includes:

• partnering with sector organisations to support accessibility to Creative Scotland funds on a localised/sector/network level;
• clarifying eligible costs for personal and project access in funded projects to remove barriers related to disability/communication difference, caring responsibility, mental health and wellbeing;
• partnership working across the UK Arts Councils to develop the All In access card; and
• addressing key driver of inequality and exclusion through work on health and mental health, including the Participatory Arts and Mental Health Fund.

Creative Scotland also monitors the success rates of those applying to its funds, including those accessing their access support services, and evaluated key development work, such as their 'Create:Inclusion' Fund.

The Scottish Government’s long-standing investment of over £150 million since 2007 in programmes such as the Youth Music Initiative and Sistema has made a huge impact helping young people across Scotland access music-making opportunities and develop their wider skills and learning, encouraging and equipping them to enter the talent pipeline if they wish.

Youth Music Initiative has helped young people in all 32 local authorities access music-making with every pupil offered a year’s free music tuition by the end of primary school. It tackles inequalities by providing music making experiences and wider cultural opportunities to children across Scotland, and particularly to those who otherwise would not be able to participate in these activities. Youth Music Initiative received a 3 per cent uplift in 2025-26, which takes the Scottish Government’s annual investment to £9.78 million. Sistema runs Big Noise education programmes across six communities in Scotland and received a 3 per cent uplift in 2025-26, which takes the Scottish Government’s annual investment to £2.68 million. As part of the Fairer Funding Pilot, the Scottish Government has also committed to fund Youth Music Initiative and Sistema at existing levels in 2026-27, further strengthening their sustainability and the talent pipeline.

In assisting individuals to move on from secondary education and further into the talent pipeline for creative industries, the regular skills assessments in the creative industries from Skills Development Scotland identify the specific skills required for various roles and help organisations and individuals understand areas of expertise and potential gaps. These assessments can be used to inform education and training programs, improve workforce development, and support individual career pathways.

The music talent pipeline is already supported through a very significant offer across Scotland’s Colleges at NC, HNC and HND level covering performance, production, sound engineering, music business and event management. There is also increased specialisation at degree level across Scotland’s Higher Education sector, covering classical, contemporary and traditional music disciplines.

More broadly, Creative Scotland plays a major role in talent development and supporting the creative talent pipeline through the National Lottery funded Open Fund for Individuals which offers early career funding to emerging artists. In 2023-24, the Open Fund made 164 awards totalling £4.2 million for leadership training and professional development.

Through their Targeted Routes and organisations funds, Creative Scotland support organisations and events such as Wide Days, the Scottish Alternative Music Awards, Showcase Scotland at Celtic Connections and Made In Scotland Expo, which provide opportunities and mentoring for young acts. Bursaries such as VACMA and the Stephen Palmer Travel Bursary Fund connected visual artists with peers and development opportunities. Go See Share helps creatives explore and share insights from international creative business models.

In the Screen sector, industry training initiatives supported by Screen Scotland include bursaries for the Edinburgh TV Festival, TRC's SuperSizer, Film FastTrack, and Reset 2023, alongside NFTS Scotland’s paid trainee programme and STV Studios’ Screw training scheme in 2023-24, which supported underrepresented entrants into HETV production.

GMAC Film’s Little Pictures and Short Circuit's Sharp Shorts provide vital support for emerging filmmakers. In 2024, Rising Stars Scotland highlighted new film talent, Screen Fringe fostered collaboration between stage and screen industries, and the YFF Skye Screenwriting Residency offered mentorship to aspiring screenwriters.

Supported by the recent uplift in Grant-in-Aid funding from the Scottish Government delivering the largest budget ever available to Creative Scotland, more than £200 million in support, across a broad spread of creative disciplines, is to be provided to 251 organisations over the next three years. The organisations funded through the Multi-Year fund support individuals in many ways – as employees, commissioned artists, programming of work, audiences and participants.

Organisations like Fèisean nan Gidheal and Fèis Rois create access to music opportunities, Alchemy Film and Arts ‘Film Town’ programme provides a year round programme of community filmmaking, skills development and creative learning, from their base in Hawick. Organisations like Shetland Arts and Eden Court, in Inverness, work with the Education sector to deliver educational courses, alongside other opportunities for artists and participants.

In addition The National Culture Strategy Action Plan updates on work to better understand local authority support for culture and explore future models of collaboration between local and national bodies. Research undertaken by Creative Scotland in partnership with Community Leisure UK and SportScotland was published in August 2024 and will further strengthen Creative Scotland’s efforts to work better together in partnership with local authorities, developing a wider understanding on all aspects that contribute to a healthy cultural ecosystem at the local level. Creative Scotland is now planning their next steps for this work, including a programme of engagement with local authorities.

Creative Scotland’s development work also supports various initiatives across Scotland targeted to the needs of the area. For example:

• Through Targeted (Place Partnership) and Open project National Lottery funding, Creative Scotland continues to support the work of the Creative Arts Business Network (CABN) in the Scottish Borders, which aims is to develop the professional creative sector in the Scottish Borders through a diverse programme of support, including mentoring, showcasing and funding; and
• Culture Collective is a Scottish Government supported programme where organisations, artists and communities work together, providing employment opportunities for creative practitioners and actively engaging people in shaping the future cultural life of their community. The programme initially ran from 2021-2024, and £4 million has been included in the 2025-26 budget to continue the programme.

The Scottish Government has no role in reviewing how additional support needs team allocations are determined within local authority secondary schools.

The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act (2004) places duties on Education authorities to identify, make provision for, and review provision for the additional support needs of children and young people for whose education they are responsible.

Funding is provided to Local Authorities by means of a block grant to allow them to allocate the total financial resources available to them, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37609 on 27 May 2025. 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.

Education authorities are responsible for identifying and meeting the additional support needs of their pupils. They have responsibility for securing appropriate resources, including teaching and support staff, to meet children and young people’s long or short-term needs.

All teachers are responsible for supporting pupils with additional support needs, not just those teachers whose role is specifically related to additional support for learning.

The number of secondary school teachers by main subject is published on the Scottish Government website here: see https://www.gov.scot/publications/teacher-census-supplementarystatistics/.

Statistics on school support staff are published on the Scottish Government website here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/school-support-staff-statistics/

Scottish Government recognises that diagnosing brain cancer can be challenging as symptoms are wide-ranging and often vague, contributing to presentations in emergency settings. We continue to work with primary care to improve the earlier diagnosis of brain cancers.

A clinical review of the Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer has just concluded to help ensure the right person is on the right pathway at the right time. For the first time, the review has ensured the inclusion of a nationally agreed non-specific symptoms referral guideline, as well as an update to the guidance for urgent referral for suspected brain tumours. Publication of the reviewed guidelines is expected this month.

A new primary care cancer education platform, Gateway C, was launched in April 2024. Gateway C provides tailored information to support earlier cancer diagnosis and enable effective decision-making. This platform is accessible to all primary care clinicians and includes a brain tumour course specifically aimed at assisting the effective assessment and management of patients with a potential brain tumour.

A new National Headache Pathway has also been published by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery. This pathway, based on presentation at General Practice, clearly lists red flag symptoms that indicate the need for urgent and/or emergency assessment to exclude a secondary cause, such as a brain tumour.

NHS Boards continue to undertake improvement work to ensure that women diagnosed with ovarian cancer can access surgery. The Scottish Government continues to seek regular updates on progress and to work with them to improve overall care for patients with ovarian cancer regardless of where they live.

Further to this, Scottish Government has provided £106 million planned care funding in 2025/26 across NHS Scotland, with £14.23 million of this directed towards Cancer Waiting Times.

This is all part of our programme to drive up productivity and tackle waiting lists, supported by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD). Together, our actions will further enable NHS Scotland to maximise capacity, build greater resilience and deliver year-on-year reductions in the number of patients who have waited too long for treatment.