Chamber and committees

Curriculum for Excellence seeks to provide our young people with the knowledge, attitudes and skills to succeed as underpinned by its four capacities: successful learners; confident individuals; responsible citizens and effective contributors. Financial literacy and the life skills feature in learning about numeracy and maths, business studies and personal and social education.

Education Scotland provides support to schools through curriculum guidance, in particular the “ Building the Curriculum 4 ” publication which is relevant to literacy, numeracy and associated thinking skills; skills for health and wellbeing, including personal learning planning, career management skills, working with others, leadership and physical co-ordination and movement skills; and skills for enterprise and employability. Schools can also access the Skills for Development Framework from the Scottish Qualifications Authority relevant to their senior phase qualifications.

In the senior phase, financial literacy features in qualifications such as SCQF levels 4 & 5 Personal Finance awards and the Applications of Mathematics qualifications, which provides advanced learning in a range of core and practical maths skills; including finance. Education Scotland also provide a range of further professional learning resources on financial literacy. A range of organisations offer further support to schools to reinforce and enhance learning in financial education including HMRC, Barclays Lifeskills, NatWest MoneySense and the Young Enterprise ‘My Money’ Talks.

In relation to skills for life and work, examples of relevant senior phase qualifications and awards include: the SafeCert SCQF Level 6 Award in Emergency First Aid at Work; Prince's Trust SCQF Awards and certificates in Personal Development and Employability Skills; Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and Youth Scotland Dynamic Youth Awards. These are in addition to a range of SQA technical and vocational qualifications. Total attainment for SQA Skills for Work, SQA Awards, National Certificates and National Progression Awards in 2023 was 72,120 passes, up 12.3% from 64,240 in 2022, the highest number on record.

In 2024-25 the Scottish Government is investing over £2.4 billion to support our colleges, universities and skills system, this includes funding for Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council.

The employer-led DYW Regional Groups and School Coordinators work with specialist partners and third sector organisations to support young people who are furthest from the labour market, including disabled young people, into positive destinations.

DYW Regional Groups collect data across the 4 DYW Key Performance Indicators. One of these focusses on equalities and captures data on the number of young people from target groups (which includes disabled young people) who have participated in a universal or bespoke employer engagement activity, facilitated by the Regional Group and / or School Coordinator. We are working with Regional Groups to capture more data for this indicator.

Data on the numbers of condoms issued in prisons is not collected centrally.

Condom provision is one of the most effective harm reduction interventions to control sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV and therefore condoms are available to all prisoners to support health protection in the prison population.

While centralised data is not collected, prison healthcare teams report that women access condoms for home visits and liberation.

Information on public sector support available to businesses in Scotland can be found on FindBusinessSupport.gov.scot.

Skills Development Scotland (SDS) frequently refer businesses to this resource to identify the funding and training that is available to them. SDS also offer a range of services to support businesses including their Employer Hub.

The Scottish Government is committed to providing revenue funding to the Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs) and revenue budget allocation was provided in the 2024-25 Scottish Budget. Budget allocations are subject to Scottish Government in-year spend controls and assurance processes, and allocations will be communicated to all RTPs directly in the coming months.

The Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) general capital support budget allocation is funded through the Local Government Finance settlement. A decision was taken to pause funding for 2024-25, given the current financial constraints, with a view to keeping under review in future years. Transport Scotland and SPT are in dialogue about the impact of this decision and maintaining their forward investment programme. These discussions will also explore the opportunity to utilise reserves currently held by SPT, and the impact of any use of reserve balances or re-phasing of capital funding, on SPT's forward maintenance and investment programmes.

The Scottish Government draft budget for 2024-25 allocates £0.5 million in revenue funding to Clyde Gateway. There is currently no capital budget specifically allocated to Clyde Gateway. Ministers have, however, yet to determine how the remaining budget within the portfolio will be prioritised.

The CICV Survey provides an insight in to the poor payment practices prevalent in the construction industry. The information contained therein will be helpful in the ongoing work of the Construction Accord Transformation Action working groups which are a collaboration between industry and government.

Scottish Government expects payments at all levels in a public contract supply chain to be made within the terms and conditions of the relevant contract or subcontract. Those agreements should comply with applicable legislation, be fair to both parties and be fairly administered. For financial year 2022-23, the core Scottish Government made 98.0% of payments within 10 days (2021-22: 97.7%) and 99.4% (2021-22: 99.2%) of all payments within the terms of its contractual 30 day payment policy.

Scottish Government’s procurement policy and procedures for public bodies on contract payments are set out in SPPN 2/2022. Bidders who are unable to assure the effectiveness and reliability of their supply chain payment processes may not be awarded a public contract. The awarding body should monitor the winning bidder’s actual payment performance and there is an escalation pathway for sub-contractors if their payment is delayed.

The Construction Accord’s Transformation Board have a Procurement and Supply Chain Working Group - on which CICV have representation - who will be looking into the issue of prompt payment throughout the supply chain. The CICV prompt payment survey results will be of assistance in this work.

There are currently 21 ministerial working groups that fall under the remit of the Transport, Net Zero and Just Transition portfolio. In addition, portfolio Ministers sit on a number of ministerial working groups which are led by other Scottish Government portfolios.

Ministerial working groups that are headed by the Transport, Net Zero and Just Transition portfolio remit are as follows:

FM Environment Council

National Strategy for 20mph Working Group

National Litter and Flytipping Forum

Storm Babet Ministerial Taskforce

National Strategy for Economic Trans Private Investment in Natural Capital Working Group

Deposit Return Scheme Ministerial Strategic Assurance Group

National Transport Strategy Delivery Board

National Transport Strategy Business Group

Orkney Ferry Replacement Task Force

Shetland Ferry Replacement Task Force

A83 Taskforce Group

LEZ Leadership Group

SEFARI Gateway Waste Emissions Specialist Advisory Group

Environment and Economy Leaders' Group (EELG)

Cleaner Air for Scotland 2: Ministerial Group

Peatland Expert Advisory Group

Green Heat Finance Taskforce

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Ministerial Group

Climate Change Plan Advisory Group

Scottish Aquaculture Council

Hydro Nation Forum

The Scottish Government has a contract for the provision of an electronic vote counting solution between the Scottish Ministers and Fujitsu Limited dated 16 October 2020. This contract delivered electronic vote counting services for the Scottish Local Government elections held on 5 May 2022. The software used for electronic vote counting is specialist elections software provided by a separate elections company, as a sub-contractor to Fujitsu. The electronic counting solution has already been tested rigorously, and independently assessed as secure and suitable, and successfully delivered the national Local Government elections in May 2022. The same elections specialist company provided the software that successfully counted votes and delivered the Local Government elections results in 2012 and 2017, as sub-contractors to a different prime contractor, CGI. The current contract also covers electronic vote counting services for Local Government by-elections held up to 31 January 2027. The solution remains in live operation for by-elections and there is no current intention to repeat the rigorous and independent testing that has already taken place.