Chamber and committees

Educational Psychologists are employed directly by education authorities. In fulfilling their statutory duty to deliver an Educational Psychology service, it is for them to make the decisions regarding how their service will be managed, the numbers of psychologists they require, and how many psychologists they employ.

The number of student Educational Psychologists that have joined the workforce in each year since 2018 is not collected by Scottish Government as part of the annual staff census.

However, to ensure that there is a sustainable supply of Educational Psychologists to meet needs, the Scottish Government and COSLA jointly invest in the Educational Psychologist training programme, and I can confirm that the number of students completing the programme since 2018 is as follows -

Year Number of Students

2018 17

2019 12

2020 28

2021 31

2022 29

2023 25

2024 26

Statutory responsibility for the delivery of school education, including any school trips, rests with local authorities and they can utilise a range of funding sources to remove or minimise costs to lower-income families.

The Scottish Government is investing up to £1 billion in the Scottish Attainment Challenge this parliamentary term to tackle the poverty related attainment gap, including £520 million of Pupil Equity Funding which goes directly to schools.

Headteachers are empowered to use this funding to take school-level approaches to supporting children and young people from lower income families. Some choose to contribute to or cover costs such as residential trips, theatre trips and outdoor learning experiences in order make access to such learning opportunities as equitable as possible.

A new national working group is also considering how to further promote inclusive and impactful outdoor learning in all its forms, including but not exclusive to residential outdoor education.

I have asked Gerard Hart, Chief Executive of Disclosure Scotland to respond. His response is as follows:

Table: The average number of days to process disclosure applications, by application type, calendar year 2016 to October 2024

The recruitment and retention of markers is an operational matter for the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) in its independent role as an examination body.

SQA works closely with the wider education system to promote and source markers, who are all experienced teachers and lecturers. There are established contingencies in place, should this be required, to ensure marking is completed on time.

Information on buildings identified as having Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC), is contained in the Scottish Government report available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/raac-in-the-public-sector/.

Statistics on additional support needs teachers, split by local authority, back to 2010 are available on the Scottish Government website in Table 6.7 of the teacher census supplementary statistics: https://www.gov.scot/publications/teacher-census-supplementary-statistics/

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of rural bus services supported by local authorities. Bus services in Scotland were deregulated by the then Conservative UK Government under the Transport Act of 1985 and are mostly provided by private operators. Under the Transport Act 1985, local authorities have a duty to identify where there is a social need for particular bus services and can subsidise these at their discretion. Funding is provided to local authorities in their annual settlement to support services they consider socially necessary and for all community transport services, including rural transport networks. In 2022-23, local authorities in Scotland spent £53 million on supported services nationwide.

Table 1 shows the total number of bed days for patients with a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who had a non-elective admission and were discharged between 2021-22 and 2023-24, broken down by health board of treatment.

Table 1: Number of non-elective4 bed days for COPD3 continuous inpatient stays2

Source: SMR01, Public Health Scotland, extract: November 2024.

1. Scotland totals include all activity submitted to PHS. This includes some non-NHS provider activity. Due to this the Scotland total may be greater than the sum of all health board activity.
2. Continuous Inpatient Stay Methodology:

A patient's entire continuous stay in a hospital setting is referred to as a Continuous Inpatient / Day Case Stay ('CIS'). A CIS is an unbroken period of time that a patient spends as an admitted patient in a hospital setting. A CIS combines all the episodes that occur during a continuous stay in hospital, including transfers between clinicians, specialties and hospitals.

3. The data provided is based on COPD recorded as the main discharge diagnosis (ICD10 codes J40 – J44) for continuous inpatient stays.

                                             1.          Discharge Diagnosis - From last/discharging episode of the CIS

4. Non – elective admission type includes admission type 20-22, 30-36 and 38-39. More information on admission types can be found here: Admission Type
   

5. More information on SMR01 data terms can be found here: SMR01 - General/Acute Inpatient and Day Case
   

The Scottish Government provides funding to support bus services nationwide, and does not hold the information required to identify support to rural services. Our commitment to bus travel includes investment of over £370 million to support concessionary bus travel and funding for our Network Support Grant of almost £50 million to help ensure our bus operators can continue to provide access to affordable transport in the de-regulated market across all of Scotland.

Under the Transport Act 1985, local authorities have a duty to identify where there is a social need for particular bus services and can subsidise these at their discretion. Funding is provided to local authorities in their annual settlement to support services they consider socially necessary and for all community transport services, including rural transport networks. In 2022-23, local authorities in Scotland spent £53 million on supported services nationwide.

We recognise that reduced levels of trust is a challenge facing governments around the world. Evidence shows that a key driver of trust is people feeling they have a say. One way we are working to improve levels of trust is through our Open Government Action Plan: providing meaningful opportunities for people to be involved in decisions that affect them and sharing information openly. This includes a fiscal transparency portal to help the public track government spend, and an AI register to show the development and use of AI in the Scottish public sector. Our commitments cover fiscal openness and transparency, health and social care, climate change, data and digital, and participation. These are all areas in which civil society and members of the public have told us the ongoing promotion of transparency, participation, inclusivity and accountability is important to them.

We are paying close attention to the impact trust has on democracy through the Democracy Matters engagement process on the future of community decision making. A key pillar of this was asking how more people can participate in local decision making. The process findings were published in September and we will now work with civil society and the wider public sector to deliver on the ambitions set out by our communities.