Chamber and committees

The recently re-established Headteacher Recruitment and Retention Working Group works jointly with education stakeholders to develop, agree and take forward actions to help improve the recruitment and retention of headteachers in Scotland. The group has been meeting on a quarterly basis since January 2022 with the last meeting taking place on 7 September 2022.

The grant to the Scottish Maritime Cluster Limited was made in line with set objectives none of which have any impact on (a) piers and (b) harbours on the Clyde and Hebrides ferry services contract.

The Scottish Government have invested over £50 million in ChargePlace Scotland, Scotland’s public charging network, which now has more than 2300 publicly available charge points, over 63 thousand member registrations and over 1,770,000 successful charge sessions recorded in the last 12 months.

Responsibility for repair of charge points lies with the host (also known as the ‘owner’) who procured and installed the charge point. The role of CPS is to advise hosts of faults as they arise.

Most faults on the network are transient and in the majority of cases require no physical intervention. This means that a high proportion are closed down swiftly and effectively. Overall reliability across the CPS network is typically very good and on average 95% - 97% of charge points are operational each day.

The subject of correspondence cases varies. These are not recorded or categorised by reason or by local authority area. Each piece of correspondence is dealt with on its own merit, given careful consideration with appropriate actions taken at the time of responding.

In 2021 we received 124 pieces of correspondence relating to ChargePlace Scotland and 80 in 2022.

At present, free school lunches are available during school term-time for all 281,856 children in primaries 1 to 5 and special schools, as well as eligible pupils from primary 6 to secondary 6. We are working with our partners in local government to plan for the expansion of free school meal provision to primaries 6 and 7, and this work is being supported by £30 million of capital funding in this financial year to support expansion of catering and dining facilities to prepare for the anticipated increase in uptake.

I recognise the current cost of living crisis is having an adverse impact on many household budgets, therefore we will be offering further support to low income families through an increase in the Scottish Child Payment to £25 per eligible child, per week starting from 14 November. On this date, the Scottish Child Payment will be extended to include families with older children aged 6 to 15. This support is not available anywhere else within the United Kingdom and I would urge all eligible families to apply for it in the coming weeks in order to start receiving it.

The Scottish Government is committed to making universal free school lunches available for all primary school children during the course of this parliamentary term. In addition, we are committed to a pilot of free school meals in secondary schools to support our consideration of further expansion.

In the lead up to the commencement of short-term let licensing on 1 October 2022, we spoke to local authorities about their readiness to implement licensing schemes. This included regular group meetings and individual discussions.

A small number of local authorities informed us that their elected members would not meet to ratify their draft short-term let policies until after 1 October 2022. In these cases local authorities have ensured their websites have information about their licensing scheme including the draft policy, draft application forms, and an email address to submit enquiries to.

Pre COVID-19, 100% of NHS National Services Scotland's (NSS) PPE sources were overseas, now nearly half of all PPE issued by NSS was manufactured here (based on September 2022 figures). This rises to 88% when nitrile gloves are excluded from the figure.

In line with the recommendations of the Audit Scotland report on PPE, a resilient Scottish PPE supply chain is a key consideration as we start to look beyond the current pandemic and plan for the long term future of PPE provision in Scotland. We are committed to supporting the domestic manufacturing PPE base through the Pandemic PPE Supply Implementation Project as far as allowed by procurement and subsidy control rules.

This work aims to provide a more resilient supply across Health, Social Care and the wider public sector for the long term, with due priority given to the need for robust supply chains and reductions in environmental impact. More broadly the Scottish Government offer extensive support to develop the manufacturing sector through our Making Scotland’s Future Programme. This includes £75 million in the world-leading National Manufacturing Institute (NMIS), already operating with the HQ due to open next year. NMIS, the Scottish Manufacturing Advisory Service and our enterprise agencies stand ready to assist companies in exploiting new opportunities or in responding to production challenges.

Scottish Ministers continue to engage with Orkney Islands Council on a regular basis with regard to ferries, including my visit to Orkney in August to meet with the council on these matters.

We have made an offer to all 4 ferry operating local authorities to share learning and explore efficiencies from CMAL’s Small Vessel Replacement Programme.

We have provided more than £56m to Orkney Islands Council for internal ferry services over the last 5 years.

Taking the ongoing challenges settings and schools face in dealing with COVID-19 and stakeholder views into account, HM Inspectors of Education did not resume the routine early learning and childcare (ELC) and school inspection programme as originally planned last academic year.

HM Inspectors of Education invited ELC settings and schools to “self-select” to take part in recovery visits during the remainder of the academic year.

Overall, 164 settings and schools self-selected for a recovery visit. Due to local circumstances, including the impact of COVID-19, some recovery visits did not proceed as planned. Between March and July 2022, HM Inspectors of Education visited 148 schools and ELC settings.

The aim of the recovery visits was to learn from settings and schools about their own current priorities as they responded to the impact of the current pandemic, what was working well and the challenges education practitioners faced. The visits were tailored to the needs of each school or setting and included both online meetings and face-to-face activities.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-11301 on‎ 21 October 2022. 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
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The effect of the provisions in The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022 are that new hosts cannot operate without a licence after 1 October 2022. The effect of this is that it placed a statutory duty on local authorities to have licence schemes opened in their areas by 1 October.

As set out in my letter to local authorities, dated 21 September, I explained that while there are no penalties under legislation for local authorities that failed to meet this deadline, there is of course a risk that local authorities could be challenged by new hosts, or anybody acting on their behalf, if they are unable to submit an application for a licence due to their local authority’s scheme not being open.