Zero Waste Scotland supported Glasgow City Council Education Services to run a food waste pilot across five schools in 2021. However, due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic and the cost of living crisis, operational priorities shifted towards cost of living support. As a result, the project was only partly delivered.

Zero Waste Scotland has undertaken analysis of data gathered and provided a food waste baseline and recommendations for reduction to these schools.

The number of withdrawals and deferrals from 2019-20 – 2022-23 are in the following table: 2023-24 data is not yet available.

The information requested is not held by the Scottish Government. I refer the Member to Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS) who may be able to provide this information. ZWS can be contacted via email at: [email protected] .

As set out in my statement to Parliament on 12 December 2023, Maths will be the first curricular area to be revised as part of the new systematic curriculum improvement cycle.

The update to the Maths curriculum will begin in 2024 and will begin to be tested with Scotland’s teachers later in the year. Literacy and English will be next, with work on that also beginning this year.

Decisions on which curricular areas should be prioritised following Maths/Numeracy and Literacy/English and timescales for those further packages of work, will be informed by evidence and will be subject to discussions with key stakeholders and delivery partners.

The requirement for local authorities to maintain teacher numbers at 2022 census levels was assessed against teacher numbers in the Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland 2023, and subject to mitigating circumstances presented by individual councils.

The report on Household food and drink waste in Scotland 2014 was published by Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS). ZWS does not have current plans to update the estimate set out in this report.

Since the introduction of this additional funding from 2020, teacher numbers have increased from 52,247 in the 2019 teacher census to 54,033 in the 2023 teacher census.

According to OECD data, the UK’s tax revenue, as a share of GDP, was 35.3% in 2022, the latest year for which internationally comparable data is available. This is broadly in line with the OECD average of 34.0%.

No directly comparable estimate is available for Scotland. However, the latest Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) report suggests that Scotland’s tax to GDP ratio was similar to the UK’s in 2022-23, and so would also be broadly in line with the OECD average.

In the devolved context such measures need to be interpreted with caution as some taxes remain reserved.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-25533 on 21 February 2024. 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 .

The Scottish Government home education guidance sets out the legal position on home education and provides advice on the roles and responsibilities of local authorities and parents in relation to children who are home educated.

This guidance is currently in the process of being updated following consultation with local authorities, other public, community and voluntary sector bodies and home educators and their relevant representative bodies. Scottish Government will engage further with stakeholders part of this process and we expect the publication of the refreshed home education guidance to be later this year. Officials will ensure that stakeholders and the public will be notified of the publication date.