Chamber and committees

The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills announced that the government will create a children and young people’s education council as part of her Parliamentary statement on Scotland’s curriculum on 22 June.

Following that announcement, a meeting was held on 21 July between Scottish Government officials and representatives from the national children and young person organisations, including those who have recently been involved in supporting the Education Recovery Youth Panel and contributing to the Covid Education Recovery Group as young people. This allowed officials to gain the benefit of their insights into the principles, working methods and detailed arrangements for the new council.

The Scottish Government is developing plans for the Council utilising this feedback, with a view to holding the first meeting of the new council as soon as possible in the autumn.

HM Inspectors of Education will restart scrutiny activity of schools soon and an announcement will follow shortly. The annual scrutiny programme outlining the range of scrutiny activity, including school inspections which will be carried out by HM Inspectors of education this academic year will also be published on Education Scotland's website.

The programme school and early learning and childcare inspections was paused on 16 March 2020 in response to Covid-19. A pause in the programme inspections was to allow education establishments to concentrate on providing support for learning throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

My officials will conduct a trawl for the information requested and I will write to Mr Mundell when their findings are complete.

The following table provides information on gross revenue expenditure in Scotland per secondary school pupil.

Table 1: Gross revenue expenditure per secondary school pupil across Scottish Local Authorities in 2019-20

The Scottish Government will fully fund the manifesto commitment to 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants over the Parliamentary term. As part of this commitment the Scottish Government has already allocated funding of £50 million in 2021-22 to local authorities to increase teacher numbers by 1,000 and classroom assistants by 500.

A breakdown of this allocation by local authority area can be found on the Scottish Government website https://www.gov.scot/publications/education-recovery-additional-funding-2021---2022-local-authority-allocations---additional-gbp50-million/ This funding will be added into the General Revenue Grant annually from 2022-23, which will provide the certainty that councils need in order to continue to plan their future permanent workforce requirements.

The settings that these additional teachers will be employed in will be determined locally, based on local need.

The Scottish Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory shows that forests and woodlands in Scotland currently sequester over 6 MtCO2 per year, net of any emissions from forest management activities. All new woodland creation schemes take into account the requirement to ensure that the cultivation methods used balance the minimisation of soil carbon release with the need to quickly establish the young trees. Levels of woodland creation have been at historically high levels in recent years, and the country’s forests are predicted to remain a carbon sink in the coming decades.

The Scottish Government’s expectations of Scottish Enterprise are set out in a framework document which expands on the agency’s responsibilities and statutory functions under the Enterprise and New Towns (Scotland) Act 1990.

Scottish Enterprise has service level agreements in place with partners which require it to respond to customer enquiries within 5 working days, with more than 90% of enquiries in a normal year receiving a response within 2 working days.

Although no specific standards are in place in relation to the provision of advisory and grant support services, Scottish Enterprise monitors this and seeks regular feedback from businesses accessing the services.

In the UK warranties for new-build residential homes typically consist of a two-year ‘developer warranty’, followed by a further eight years of structural cover. A warranty on a new build property is a type of insurance policy, meaning that any changes to the existing time periods for which such a warranty would apply falls within the remit of the UK Government as a reserved matter in line with Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998.

The Scottish Government is working with the UK Government to explore how the proposed New Homes Ombudsman scheme, within the UK Building Safety Bill, could operate in Scotland. The aims of the scheme are to provide better protection to consumers purchasing new build homes and to make access to remediation simpler and easier. The Scottish Government is committed to continuing to work with the UK Government as the Bill moves through its amendments process, to try to achieve a UK-wide scheme that works for the people of Scotland and respects the devolution settlement.

A public consultation exercise, Building standards (fire safety) - a consultation on external wall systems - Scottish Government - Citizen Space , is currently being undertaken which includes options on the role of BS 8414 (and associated BR 135).

Responses to the consultation will be used to inform the Building Standards (Fire Safety) Review Panel 2020-21 work and final policy that will be prepared in support of any legislative changes. Any legislative changes may have an effect on ‘building standards verifier requirements’. The consultation closes in October 2021.

As an interim measure, the Scottish Government Building Standards Division have requested notification from local authority verifiers under S34 of the Building (Scotland) Act 2003 where BS 8414 / BR 135 and BS 9414 extended field of application assessments have been used to demonstrate compliance with the mandatory building standards. These interim measure decisions to remove reference to BS 8414 and BR 135 were taken and implemented, respectively, as follows:

(a) March 2021

(b) March/ April 2021

Additionally, pending the outcome of the review, advice on avoiding the use of MCM (category 3) was introduced into Section 2 (fire) of the Technical Handbooks in April 2021 .