Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is providing local authorities across Scotland with £21.75 million to provide targeted free school meal support during the school holidays throughout the forthcoming school year. We wrote to local authorities on 14 May to inform them of their allocations and I can confirm that North Ayrshire Council will receive £704,000 in additional funding to support the delivery of free school meal approaches in all school holidays.

This support will be available to all families who are in receipt of any of the qualifying benefits which would enable them to receive free school meals, regardless of whether their children are in primary or secondary school and this support will begin at the start of the forthcoming summer holidays.

Local authorities will be given the flexibility to support eligible families through any method which they feel will best meet local needs and circumstances within their respective areas.

The Scottish Government is providing local authorities across Scotland with £28 million to expand the universal provision of free school lunches to include all children in primary 4 starting from August 2021, and to include all children in primary 5 starting from January 2022.

We wrote to local authorities on 14 May to inform them of their allocations and I can confirm that North Ayrshire Council will receive £651,000 in additional funding to support the expansion of universal free school meals to primary 4 and primary 5 children in 2021-22.

The appeals process was developed following consultation and stakeholder engagement. This included consideration of teacher workload.

Teachers are encouraged to have discussions with their learners in advance of submitting their provisional grades and, if learners are unhappy with these results, will have a further dialogue in advance of any appeal to advise on the process.

Schools and colleges are expected to support their learners in accessing the appeals service where needed and, where a learner is appealing against the academic judgement made, will be asked to provide all the necessary evidence and materials that were used to determine the learner's result.

SQA will review the learner's submission and may, if necessary, discuss aspects with the relevant teacher.

The previous Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science was in regular contact with both the Employers’ Association and EIS-FELA in relation to the national dispute regarding instructor/assessor roles in the college sector, which has now been resolved.

The Scottish Government has been clear throughout this dispute that both the employers and trade unions must continue with negotiations in an attempt to resolve this situation, which is absolutely not in the best interests of our learners. EIS-FELA have suspended local industrial action at Forth Valley College to allow the matter to be referred to the National Joint Secretaries for review and I urge both sides to resolve this dispute without the need for further industrial action.

The Scottish Government remains firmly of the view that it is for the college unions and the employers to negotiate pay and terms and conditions voluntarily in the spirit of collaboration and co-operation. We do however continue to work with the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), who work closely with the sector, to ensure any actions taken are compliant with the Scottish Public Finance Manual, the SFC Financial Memorandum and are in line with Fair Work principles.

Tim Hair, Turnaround Director of Ferguson Marine, updated the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee on the delivery timetable and budget for vessels 801 and 802 in March 2021. The next of the regular quarterly updates on progress, as requested by the committee in their report on ferry procurement is expected at the end of June 2021.

SMEs and micro businesses are critical to the social, economic and environmental health of Scotland and we are committed to leveraging the full procurement rules to make it as easy possible for SMEs to bid for and win public procurement contracts and/or participate in local supply chains:

• Scotland outperforms the UK Gov target of 33% central government procurement spend going with SMEs by 2022. Even without target setting, in Scotland, 47% of public procurement spend in 2018-2019 went to SMEs; exceeding UKG( 26%), EU average (45%) and US(30%).
• last year, 58% of procurement spend on Scottish businesses went to SMEs, which account for only 40% of business turnover in Scotland, showing that SMEs are able to take advantage of the significant benefits that exist in relation to engaging with public procurement in Scotland.
• In 2019-20, over 26,000 suppliers were awarded public sector contracts worth £6.9bn through our Public Contracts Scotland portal; our data shows that 79% of suppliers awarded contracts in Scotland were SMEs from all locations and 63% were Scottish SMEs.
• We continue to provide funding (up to £150,000 in 2021-22) to the Supplier Development Programme which delivers free training and guidance on how to submit and win public procurement bids. During FY 2020-21, over 2,400 Scottish SMEs attended training events with 93% stating they were more likely to bid for public sector contracts as a direct result.
• The Supplier Development Programme also delivers free local and national Meet the Buyer events to put suppliers in touch with public sector buyers to learn more about up and coming contracts
• In March 2021, we published the results of a comprehensive survey of suppliers which received over 1550 responses. Its findings indicate that there is much to be positive about in respect of Scottish public sector procurement and the recent work done to improve it. At the same time it found that there are clearly areas in which the Scottish public sector could do more to build on the steps already taken to maximise the impact of public procurement in Scotland.
• This year we have also launched a series of SME round table meetings to hear directly from SME suppliers about their experiences of bidding for and winning public contracts.
• Of the [1] £369 million that Scottish Government spent through its contracts, over £120 million went directly to SMEs, with many more SMEs benefiting through our supply chains; they shared over £40 million of spend as subcontractors, with £30 million of that going to Scottish SMEs.

[1] Scottish Government Procurement Annual Report 2020

Arrangements are being put in place to establish the new Council for Economic Transformation, which will shape and drive our 10 year National Strategy for Economic Transformation. We have already publicly committed to do this within our first 100 days and we will update with regard to progress shortly.

To clarify, the one off pro rata thank you payment for all eligible health and social care staff is £500. We are working at pace with our key stakeholders to establish an effective way to pay Personal Assistants. We will issue further details as soon as this is agreed. We are confident that we have developed an online portal to reach all eligible Personal Assistants and we are aiming to have it open very soon.

Responding to incidents is an operational matter for our Emergency Services and the Scottish Government does not hold information centrally on response times to specific incidents or locations.

Teachers are not expected to be in contact with SQA, schools, or individual pupils over the summer break. Results will be published on 10 August, and schools are not required to manage handling of any queries and initiating of any appeals processes at a local level until they return from summer holidays.