Chamber and committees

In 2022-23 Skills Development Scotland provided Colleges with funding of £11,927,213 for the delivery of Modern Apprenticeships.

In addition, Colleges utilise credits to support the delivery of Modern Apprenticeships. Any credits used by colleges must comply with the Credit Guidance issued by the Scottish Funding Council.

In 2022-23 the Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland provided Colleges £10,501,763 for the delivery of Foundation Apprenticeships.

In 2023, SG published its Vision for Scotland’s Public Electric Vehicle Charging Network , highlighting the need for a transition towards a public charging network that is largely financed and delivered by the private sector. In late 2024 we will publish an Implementation Plan identifying the key actions be taken to deliver our Vision in response to the UK CCC recommendation.

This Implementation Plan will include a route map for delivering approximately 24,000 additional public charge points by 2030 and will be developed in partnership with key stakeholders who share collective responsibility for delivering public EV charging across Scotland and outline an agreed set of actions to meet Scotland’s needs, including the needs of rural and island communities.

Transport Scotland is not the procuring authority for the Ardrossan Harbour Re-Development Project, this is the responsibility of Peel Ports Group as the statutory harbour authority. Transport Scotland has as part of the design and planning stage; and as part of the business case cost exercise review appointed external consultants to undertake work.

Since 2016 Transport Scotland has appointed Peter Brett Associates for the 2016/2017 STAG report, MacWilliams Consulting for a project gateway review process; Turner and Townsend in 2023 for the cost estimate review and Morton Fraser MacRoberts (previously MacRoberts Solicitors) in relation to the work on the legal and commercial agreements which are ongoing.

In the last three years, the Scottish Government has invested £19.6 million of additional funding specifically to increase the provision of insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors. This funding consisted of £5.1 million in 2020 to 2021 and £14.5 million in 2021 to 2022. It was allocated based on the percentage of patients with Type 1 diabetes within each given NHS Board area relative to the Scottish population. This data was taken from the Scottish Diabetes Survey 2020, which can be found here: https://www.diabetesinscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Diabetes-Scottish-Diabetes-Survey-2020.pdf .

The £5.1 million of additional funding in 2020 to 2021 was allocated as per the breakdown below:

The final Scottish Government response will take into account the views provided by stakeholders in their written consultation responses on the main issues of the report, including an environment court, which reflects the evidence that was provided to the Net Zero, Energy, and Transport Committee. The Scottish Government will continue to engage with stakeholders on environmental governance and environmental justice.

This relates to indicative figures provided by universities at the start of the academic session. The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) will publish the 2023-24 academic year Official Statistics data in 2025. These will provide the most accurate figures on enrolments into modern language Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes.

This information is informing the work of Strategic Board for Teacher Education, which is considering issues around the recruitment and retention of teachers in Scotland in detail together with work to improving the promotion of teaching as a valued career.

Both the Scottish Government and Scottish Funding Council have offered to work with universities to develop alternative routes into subjects which have traditionally been difficult to recruit to.

Our Teaching Bursary Scheme is offering a £20,000 payment to career changers who are looking to undertake teacher training in hard to fill STEM subjects – physics, maths, technical education, computing science, chemistry and home economics. The scheme was also extended to include Gaelic as a secondary subject, and Gaelic medium across all secondary subjects and in primary.

There is only one high street ophthalmologist (ophthalmic medical practitioner) listed to provide General Ophthalmic Services in Scotland.

However, community optometrists have been increasing their role to support the care of NHS patients and this is continuing. NHS Education for Scotland funded training is enabling more optometrists to become independent prescribers each year resulting in more care for patients without the need for hospital referral or general practice support. Scotland is also the first country in the UK to embed independent prescribing into the undergraduate optometry course from this autumn.

Additionally, community optometrists are also becoming accredited around Scotland to safely manage the care of patients with lower risk glaucoma, enabling the discharge of these patients to high quality care nearer to home, freeing up much needed hospital eye service capacity.

The Scottish Government has not recently undertaken an assessment of unmet need for people with hearing loss, but we are engaged with stakeholders and those with lived experience to inform our understanding of unmet need.

As part of the See Hear Strategy refresh, we have engaged with people who are hard of hearing, deaf and deafblind. This includes children, young people and their parents/ carers.

We asked what topics and issues matter to them for inclusion in the strategy, through an online survey and a series of in-person and online focus groups and interviews.

In total we have received insights from over 170 adults with lived experience and 17 parents and carers of children/young people. Additional focus group discussions were held with 17 children and young people with lived experience from all sensory impairment groups. The engagement took place between September 2023 and February 2024.

The Scottish Government allocated grant funding to Higher Education Institutions to deliver the Into Headship programme, as outlined in the following table:

The Scottish Government has no plans to remove the requirement for headteachers to hold the Standard for Headship.