- Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 February 2011
-
Current Status:
Answered by Michael Russell on 4 March 2011
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it considers outdoor learning to be an effective means of delivering the outcomes of Curriculum for Excellence.
Answer
Yes. We believe that our children and young people''s learning experiences can be enhanced by maximising the potential of the outdoors. To help achieve this, we invested in the production and promotion of guidance in the form of curriculum for excellence through outdoor learning to support opportunities presented by the new school curriculum for learning in the outdoors. The guidance makes it clear that the outdoor environment offers motivating, exciting, different, relevant and easily accessible activities from pre-school years through to college. In addition, we have allocated more than £800,000 to support various initiatives to encourage the use of the outdoor environment to help deliver Curriculum for Excellence for all children and young people.
- Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 February 2011
-
Current Status:
Answered by Michael Russell on 4 March 2011
To ask the Scottish Executive what its position is on the need to develop teachers’ confidence and competence through training and guidance to increase the use of outdoor learning for the delivery of Curriculum for Excellence outcomes.
Answer
Feedback from events to promote curriculum for excellence through outdoor learning emphasised that access to good quality continuous professional development opportunities is key to embedding outdoor learning in learning and teaching. While it is the responsibility of individual teachers, schools and local authorities to ensure access to appropriate continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities, we allocated funding of £100,000 in 2010-11 to enable Learning and Teaching Scotland to develop and deliver a CPD programme for teachers and early years practitioners. Currently, more than 730 teachers and practitioners have registered for the 51 sessions on offer. In addition the curriculum for excellence through outdoor learning online resource provides easy to navigate advice, guidance and examples of practice and resources to provide ideas and inspiration for learning in the outdoors.
- Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
-
Date lodged: Thursday, 17 February 2011
-
Current Status:
Answered by Michael Russell on 4 March 2011
To ask the Scottish Executive whether it considers that Curriculum for Excellence through outdoor learning is helping to build the confidence and competence of teachers to make effective use of the outdoors to achieve Curriculum for Excellence outcomes.
Answer
Yes. We believe that the support we are providing through Learning and Teaching Scotland as noted in the answers to questions S3W-39689, S3W-39690 and S3W-39693 on 4 March 2011 is helping to build the confidence and competence of teachers to make effective use of the outdoors. This is reinforced through very positive feedback from the continuing professional development events.
All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at:
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.
- Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
-
Date lodged: Monday, 14 February 2011
-
Current Status:
Answered by Michael Russell on 4 March 2011
To ask the Scottish Executive how many school playing fields have been sold in each year since 2007, broken down by local authority
Answer
The information requested is not held centrally.
- Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
-
Date lodged: Monday, 14 February 2011
-
Current Status:
Answered by Michael Russell on 4 March 2011
To ask the Scottish Executive how much each local authority has raised by selling playing fields in each year since 2007
Answer
The information requested is not held centrally.
- Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
-
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 February 2011
-
Current Status:
Answered by Michael Russell on 2 March 2011
To ask the Scottish Executive how many outdoor education centre places have been available to schoolchildren in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority.
Answer
The Scottish Government does not hold this information.
Information from inspection activities suggest that most primary schools provide children with an opportunity to experience a residential outdoor education experience at some point during primary school - most typically during P6 or P7 in which almost all young people participate. Most secondary schools provide young people with an opportunity for at least one residential stay of some description during secondary school but this might not be a traditional outdoor education type experience. Inspections suggest that opportunities for outdoor learning in secondary schools such as participation in the John Muir Award and Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme Programmes are increasing and support the drive for greater opportunity for and recognition of wider achievement enshrined within the expectations of Curriculum for Excellence.
- Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
-
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 February 2011
-
Current Status:
Answered by Michael Russell on 2 March 2011
To ask the Scottish Executive how many outdoor education centre (a) instructors and (b) team leaders there have been in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority.
Answer
The Scottish Government does not hold this information.
- Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
-
Date lodged: Tuesday, 08 February 2011
-
Current Status:
Answered by Michael Russell on 2 March 2011
To ask the Scottish Executive how much support it has made available to outdoor education centres in each year since 1999, broken down by local authority.
Answer
Delivery of education is devolved to local authorities and funding for this is included in the local government settlement. It is for education authorities to consider the provision of outdoor education in their areas and make arrangements with providers as necessary, in addition to any facilities that they may operate. They are locally elected and accountable for such decisions.
- Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
-
Date lodged: Tuesday, 01 February 2011
-
Current Status:
Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 23 February 2011
To ask the Scottish Executive what the average waiting time was to see a hearing specialist in each of the last 12 months, broken down by NHS board.
Answer
Information on audiology services is collected on an aggregated form. Consequently, it is not possible to provide the information requested. However, information on the median wait for first appointment with a specialist is provided in the following table.
Waiting time information for audiology services is relatively new data and is currently still under development. As the information collection system is fairly new there are data quality issues around this information and figures should be treated with caution. ISD is working with all NHS boards to improve data quality.
NHSscotland: Median Wait for First Appointment with a Specialist for the Quarters Ending March, June, September and December 2010
| NHS Board | March (weeks) | June (weeks) | September (weeks) | December (weeks) |
| Ayrshire and Arran | 8 | 7 | 6 | 9 |
| Borders | 11 | 6 | 6 | 9 |
| Dumfries and Galloway | 1 | 3 | 7 | 12 |
| Fife | 10 | 8 | 7 | 7 |
| Forth Valley | 13 | x | 22 | 24 |
| Grampian | 6 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| Greater Glasgow and Clyde(a) | 6 | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Highland(b) | x | 11 | 11 | 12 |
| Lanarkshire(c) | 0 | 1 | 6 | 4 |
| Lothian | x | x | x | 5 |
| Orkney | 1 | 2 | 2 | 3 |
| Shetland | 4 | 4 | 8 | 7 |
| Tayside(d) | x | 24 | 23 | 25 |
| Western Isles(e) | x | x | 0 | 15 |
Source: ISD Scotland.
x data not available.
Notes:
(a) Clyde data is not available for January 2010 and July to December 2010 due to system issues.
(b) Data cleansing is ongoing, please treat with caution. Paediatric figures not available for April.
(c) Data cleansing is ongoing, please treat with caution. Adult figures not available for April 2010.
(d) Paediatric figures not available for April 2010.
(e) Provides Audiology services for adults only.
- Asked by: Liz Smith, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
-
Date lodged: Wednesday, 02 February 2011
-
Current Status:
Answered by Richard Lochhead on 21 February 2011
To ask the Scottish Executive what changes were made to the methodology used to determine the natural heritage indicator for the area of Scotland unaffected by built development; for what reason, and how comparable the 2009 results are with the results between 2002 and 2008 as a consequence of these changes.
Answer
I understand that results from this Scottish Natural Heritage indicator for 2009 and 2008 are not directly comparable with those from 2002 because it was not possible in that analysis to take account of topography, i.e. Scotland was treated as a flat surface. Technological advances in 2008 enabled topography to be incorporated in the analysis and to produce a more realistic map. At the same time, the distances over which structures were assumed to exert visual influence were reviewed to give a more realistic measure of visual impact.
However, changes in the method have had little effect on the overall extent of visual influence. Replicating the original, i.e. the 2002, method for 2008 gave a result of 30.97% of Scotland unaffected by built development whereas the improved method gave a closely similar result of 31.17% (0.2% difference). A minor revision between 2008 and 2009 was that it became possible to incorporate individual turbine location data in place of a single central point location for wind farms. This has a negligible effect on the indicator results.
