Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is clear that there is no place for racism in our schools. Discrimination or prejudice of any kind is unacceptable and must be addressed quickly whenever it arises. All staff are expected to be proactive in promoting positive relationships and behaviour in the classroom, playground and the wider school community.

The Racism and Racist Incidents sub-group of the Anti-racism in Education Programme (AREP) is focussed on the support to schools and school staff to improve understanding of racism and to ensure that these issues are properly identified and addressed. It is currently developing guidance on a whole-school approach to preventing and responding to racism and racist incidents in schools. Further information about the workstream, including minutes from their meetings can be accessed here: Racism and Racist Incidents subgroup - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

The RRI workstream is currently developing practical guidance for schools to support them to respond to racism and racist incidents, including strengthening approaches to recording and monitoring.

It is anticipated this guidance will be published in Spring 2025.

The current See Hear Strategy which was published in 2014 still exists to support children and adults who have deafness, sight loss and dual sensory loss to access the support and social care they need.

See Hear Leads, within local authorities, are in place to help drive progress across priority areas within each local partnership.

Since March 2023 policy officials have been engaged in extensive discussions with stakeholders, delivery partners and people with lived experience to hear what has been working well and any challenges people with Sensory Loss were facing in living a good life. Discussions are taking place across Scottish Government to identify other areas of policy work which can help resolve some of those challenges. The publication date of the refreshed strategy will be announced in due course.

As part of Education Scotland’s Anti-Racism Mentors project, selected alumni from the Building Racial Literacy programme are working to take forward anti-racist action at local and national levels, with some of their activities exploring models of parental engagement.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-30894 on 11 November 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’s Anti-Racism in Education Programme continues to consider the best ways in which the voices of young people, particularly those with lived experience, are centred within the programme. Since 2021, we have provided funding to a range of young people’s organisations, including Intercultural Youth Scotland, Show Racism the Red Card, the Scottish Youth Parliament and the Children’s Parliament, to participate in discussions and support the development of all of our resources, guidance and professional learning.

We expect schools and local authorities to record all incidents of bullying and violence in schools.

In 2019 we introduced a consistent national approach to recording and monitoring bullying incidents in schools. HMIe carried out a thematic review of approaches to recording and monitoring incidents of bullying in schools and published its report in February 2023.

As part of its response to this review, the Scottish Government established a working group to review Respect for All, its national anti-bullying guidance as well as the supplementary guidance on recording and monitoring bullying incidents. The updated guidance will be published in November 2024.

The Digital Citizen Unit (DCU) was created in 2022 with the Digital Citizen Division (DCD) forming in 2023. DCD is the team within Scottish Government that manage the Connecting Scotland Programme; Ethical Digital Nation; Unlocking the Value of Data; and the Knowledge and Information Shared Services Unit, which is an operational internal business support unit for Core Scottish Government and some public sector shared services customers, comprised of: Information Assurance and Data Protection; Knowledge and Information Management; and Library and Information Services functions.

The Digital Inclusion Alliance is the proposed national delivery mechanism to bring together the public, private and third sectors to jointly agree how to tackle digital exclusion through long-term, sustainable approaches.

The work to establish the Alliance commenced in November 2023 following approval in the Connecting Scotland Full Business Case. We are currently scoping out options for the financial and legal structure of the Digital Inclusion Alliance and once these are finalised and agreed with Ministers the Alliance will be formally constituted.

To help us co-design the focus of the Alliance and define the role of the third and public sector partnership within that Alliance, we established a Short Life Working Group in March 2024. This group is co-convened by Scottish Government and COSLA using the principles of the Verity House Agreement. Its members are the key organisations in the public and third sector who will work in partnership within the Alliance.

Scotland’s Digital Inclusion Charter is delivered by SCVO as part of an annual grant of £308,000. This funding supports a much wider programme of activity delivered by SCVO to tackle digital exclusion. SCVO estimates that around 10% of the annual grant covers staff time and costs directly associated with development and promotion of the Charter.

The launch event in August 2024 was hosted as an in-kind contribution from Standard Life plc, a Charter signatory, which covered the costs of the event.

In 2023, Scottish Government published revised guidance on the Provision of Equipment and Adaptations, which includes actions regarding provision for short-term wheelchair loans. Officials are currently engaging with Health and Social Care Partnerships to better understand how this and the related guidance on the Provision of Wheelchairs for Short-Term Loan is being locally implemented. Throughout the course of their engagement, officials will consider if any updates to this guidance or additional materials are necessary.

As I set out in response to S6W-30360 we are providing a range of support and funding to work that aims to promote red squirrel populations. Alongside the support detailed in my previous answer, we have also recently awarded the Eastern Lowlands Red Squirrel Group a development grant of £59,500 through the Scottish Government Nature Restoration Fund. The funding will be used to create a conservation strategy dedicated to protecting and restoring the red squirrel population across the eastern lowlands.

The grant will support a year-long initiative to get a better understanding of population sizes of both red and grey squirrels across Fife, Kinross and Clackmannan-shire, and identify key challenges and opportunities for safeguarding Scotland's beloved native red squirrels in the face of growing environmental pressures.