Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) are currently working with the sector to better identify those who leave college, including those who move on to work opportunities or other positive destinations. This work is ongoing and the information will be made available by SFC through Official Statistics products in due course.

The intention is for the Scottish Qualifications Authority to continue to operate at the time of the 2024 and 2025 exam diets, with the new qualifications body being established in late 2025, after the 2025 exam diet.

The new body will therefore be responsible for overseeing the 2026 exam diet.

The Scottish Government has collected six-monthly reports from local authorities on school counselling services since January 2021.

The number of young people that accessed the service in each period, broken down by local authority can be found below. It is acknowledged that some young people accessed the service in multiple periods so may be recorded twice.

Ministers and Scottish Government officials have met representatives of the college sector frequently since 1 April 2021 through in-person meetings, visits and online meetings.

The SQA will be replaced by the new qualifications body in late 2025, after the 2025 exam diet. There will be a period of transition with transfer arrangements in place to support this process.

Teachers require a broad professional knowledge of early reading as a complex interplay of skills and background factors in order to improve children's literacy.

Phonics approaches form one aspect of an overall pedagogy for early reading.

Education Scotland is currently working to develop updated guidance and research-informed professional learning resources which will support teachers to develop children’s early reading. The resources will include guidance and advice on phonics as part of an overall reading pedagogy. In line with other items of guidance relating to Scotland’s curriculum, the resources are being developed within a broader context which seeks to empower teachers and schools to adapt their approach to meet the needs of individual learners.

The Scottish Government has an ongoing programme of evaluation on the employability services it provides.

A programme of evaluation has been in place for Fair Start Scotland (FSS) since its inception and all evaluation reports are publicly available on www.gov.scot . The evaluations have adopted a range of methodological approaches to represent and capture the experiences of a variety of contexts, including rural, medium, or large urban areas. The Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 FSS overall evaluation reports provide information on outcomes associated with taking part in FSS for individuals with a range of socio-demographic characteristics, including participants living in rural areas.

The Year 1 report is available at: Fair Start Scotland evaluation report 2: overview of year one - November 2019 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Year 2 report is available at: Fair Start Scotland - evaluation report 3: year two - overview - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Year 3 report is available at: Fair Start Scotland: evaluation report 4 - year 3 overview - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

An implementation evaluation of No One Left Behind and Young Person’s Guarantee was published in August 2023. The evaluation explored how effectively No One Left Behind and the Young Person's Guarantee had been implemented, the experiences of service providers and service users, and lessons from early delivery. The first stage of fieldwork included interviews with local employability stakeholders within several local authority areas, with areas selected to ensure a mix by geography (island, rural, medium / large urban), size and stage of implementation of service delivery.

The Implementation Evaluation of No One Left Behind and Young Person’s Guarantee Implementation is available at: No One Left Behind and the Young Person's Guarantee: implementation evaluation - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Scottish Government will continue to undertake evaluation of its employability services, and plans for further evaluation activity are under development.

An implementation evaluation of No One Left Behind and Young Person’s Guarantee was published in August 2023.

This evaluation considered progress in implementation and delivery of No One Left Behind and Young Person’s Guarantee, the experiences of service providers and service users, barriers and enablers to implementation and identified lessons from early delivery. These areas are core features of process evaluations .

The Implementation Evaluation of No One Left Behind and Young Person’s Guarantee is available at: No One Left Behind and the Young Person's Guarantee: implementation evaluation - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Discussions with both COSLA and individual local authorities about breakfast provision have taken place over the last eighteen months. These have covered issues such as existing delivery, and the range of possible delivery models and costs. The Scottish Government is currently working with the local authority facilities management organisation, AssistFM, to develop a clear picture of the scale and uptake of breakfast provision across Scotland.

There is a currently a mixed delivery of breakfast provision across Scotland with a range of service providers including public, private and third sector. We have conducted provisional modelling of breakfast provision and have begun work with local authorities and key stakeholders to better understand and map provision. We are continuing our mapping work which will contribute to more detailed modelling in future.