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The Scottish Government recognises the important role Active Play has in providing children with the opportunity to develop physical skills in their early years and to encourage a long-term relationship with physical activity. The Active Play Development Project continues to have a positive impact for children, with the delivery of high quality Active Play experiences and resources across three local authority areas Glasgow, Highland and North Ayrshire.

Enjoyment in Active Play has been one of the biggest drivers for children’s participation, because of this fun and inclusive approach, children are more motivated and confident to be physically active. There are currently 1213 children directly participating in the programme in a range of settings and the reach continues to grow as learning from year one of the project is built upon.

Scottish Government have committed to ensure that sportscotland’s Active Schools programme is free for all children and young people by the end of this Parliament. While there are still a small number of cases where charging remains, it is not currently possible to determine how many children this applies to.

The Active Schools Network consists of over 400 Active Schools managers and coordinators working with schools. This means that every state school in Scotland is supported by an Active Schools coordinator dedicated to developing and supporting the delivery of quality sporting opportunities for children and young people.

Data published by sportscotland in 2023 shows significantly increased participation levels across the past academic year (2022-23), with over 4.6 million visits (a rise of 34% on 2021-22) made to almost 247,000 Active Schools sessions. The number of Active Schools participants (over 269,000 children and young people), deliverers (over 17,900 with 90% of those being volunteers), and school/club links (over 2,500) also increased from the previous academic year as the recovery from the pandemic continued.

The Care Inspectorate publishes annual statistics on the number of childminders operating in Scotland. The following table summarises published Care Inspectorate data from the last 10 years. The figure for 2023 is expected to be published in the autumn of 2024.

The Scottish Government is considering the approach to publication of the strategic framework and plan for the early learning and school age childcare profession in light of the new childcare commitments included in the Programme for Government 2023-24 and will provide an update in due course.

We are continuing to work with the Framework Steering Group and other partners to support delivery of the actions developed as part of the original plan. We have, for example, already developed a range of new learning resources, implemented a Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) fee waiver, released new mental health and wellbeing resources for the workforce and will shortly launch a new national portal for professional learning.

We are also continuing to support the profession by providing local authorities with an additional £16 million to deliver the Programme for Government commitment to increase pay to £12 per hour for staff in the Private Voluntary and Independent (PVI) sector who are delivering funded early learning and childcare from April 2024. This demonstrates our commitment to the Fair Work agenda, as we remain the only part of the UK to pay ELC staff in the PVI sector the real Living Wage.

An update on the provision of digital devices was given in the 2024-25 Scottish Government Budget.

In order to maximise the impact of capital funding available, we will seek to provide support at a household level, targeting investment specifically at disadvantaged families with children. This approach will improve equity of access to devices and connectivity for those who need it most, helping families realise the broad range of benefits associated with digital inclusion. It will also enable access not only to digital tools and resources for learning, but to digital society and online public services. Through doing so, it will expand the impact of this investment beyond learners to their wider families.

The Scottish Government does not allocate fully registered teachers to local authorities. Statutory responsibility for the recruitment and employment of teachers and all other support staff in local authority schools sits with individual councils.

Probationer teachers progressing through the Teacher Induction Scheme (TIS) are placed with local authorities through an allocation process. This is a placement and not employment. Where the number of probationers exceeds the number of places offered initially by local authorities these are subsequently allocated on a supernumerary basis. As previously indicated in answer to S6W-23885 this number was initially 626. To date there are over 500 deferrals and withdrawals from this year’s initial cohort so the 600 “supernumerary” figure as of May 2023 does not mean there are 600 surplus teachers.

A note of the Head Teacher Taskforce meeting held on 27 June 2023 can be accessed here: Head Teacher Taskforce on Exclusion minutes: June 2023 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-25062 on 27 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 .

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-25063 on 27 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 total cost for commissioning the Lessons Learned report was £25,000.