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Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6O-03616

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 12 June 2024
Current Status: Taken in the Chamber on 20 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support schools in rural communities.

Question reference: S6W-27864

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 29 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 7 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what consideration Scottish Forestry has given to allocating funds from the Strategic Timber Transport Fund to support the full reopening of Aboyne Bridge.

Scottish Forestry maintains very close working relationships with the relevant Local Authority and timber businesses in this region. Whilst we are aware of the closure of the Aboyne Bridge, and there have been discussions with local forest businesses around the implications of further deterioration on the adjacent Dinnet Bridge, Scottish Forestry has not received a request from the Local Authority for support towards reopening the Aboyne Bridge currently.

Scottish Forestry recently awarded £101,000 from the Strategic Timber Transport Fund to support £202,000 of improvements to the nearby B976 Birsemore to Dinnet Bridge Road through collaboration with Aberdeenshire Council.

Question reference: S6W-27677

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 22 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 4 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has plans to review the Teacher Induction Scheme to ensure that it is fully equipped to serve the needs of schools in rural areas.

Question reference: S6W-27676

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 20 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 3 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the work being carried out by the Strategic Board for Teacher Education.

The Board agreed its workplan in September 2023. The most recently published version of the workplan can be found on the Scottish Government website. https://www.gov.scot/publications/strategic-board-teacher-education-meeting-27-thursday-1-february-2024-10-00am-11-30am/pages/2/

The workplan contains three workstreams:

Workstream 1 – Workforce Planning and Increasing Diversity of the Profession
Workstream 2 – Improving the Promotion of Teaching as a Valued Career
Workstream 3 – Continuum of Teacher Education

The Board has held meetings in November, February and March to progress these workstreams. The agendas, minutes and papers from these meeting are published on the Scottish Government website at https://www.gov.scot/groups/strategic-board-for-teacher-education/

The Board last met on 15 May 2024, and the agenda, minutes and papers from this meeting will be published on the Scottish Government website following the next meeting of the Board, which is scheduled for 27 June.

Question reference: S6W-27691

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 20 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenni Minto on 3 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to offer more training programmes in audiology to help tackle the reported workforce shortage.

Question reference: S6W-27673

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 20 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 3 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what steps it is taking to meet its target to reduce teacher class contact time by the end of this parliamentary session.

We remain committed to reducing class contact timegiving teachers more time out of the classroom. Any changes to terms and conditions for teachers, including how this time will be used, are matters for agreement through the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers.

To inform this work, we commissioned an external modelling and research exercise to help inform discussions which was published on 7 May. This contains a number of high-level future scenarios and assesses their broad compatibility with any changes to teachers’ contracted class-contact time.

These scenarios will help to facilitate our discussions with SNCT partners on how we can best deliver this commitment.

We are offering local authorities £145.5m in this year’s budget to maintain teacher numbers. This will assist in delivery in the reduction of class contact time.

Question reference: S6W-27675

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 20 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 3 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure that Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) intake targets are met, particularly in relation to STEM subjects.

Our Teaching Bursary Scheme offers a £20,000 payment to career changers who are looking to undertake teacher training in hard-to-fill STEM subjects – physics, maths, technical education, computing science, chemistry and home economics. The scheme was also extended to include Gaelic as a secondary subject, and Gaelic medium across all secondary subjects and in primary.

In addition, the Strategic Board for Teacher Education (SBTE) is considering issues around the recruitment and retention of teachers in Scotland in detail, together with work to improving the promotion of teaching as a valued career.

The Scottish Government and Scottish Funding Council have also offered to work with universities to develop alternative routes into subjects which have traditionally been difficult to recruit to.

Question reference: S6W-27625

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 16 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 3 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S6W-16260 by Jenny Gilruth on 17 April 2023, whether it will provide an update on how many schools are currently mothballed, broken down by local authority area.

The Scottish Government does not routinely collect data on mothballed schools in Scotland. The Scottish Government does collect data from local authorities in order to collate a list of schools regarded as rural for the purposes of the Schools (Consultation)(Scotland) Act 2010. The most recent rural schools list was published on 25 October 2021 - Rural schools in Scotland - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) . The rural schools list includes those schools the relevant local authority has mothballed. The 2021 rural schools list shows that 21 schools were reported as being mothballed. The following table shows how many rural schools are mothballed by local authority area.

Local Authority	Number of schools reported as being mothballed
Aberdeenshire	4
Argyll & Bute	2
Dumfries & Galloway	1
Eilean Siar	2
Falkirk	2
Fife	1
Highland	4
Moray	1
Scottish Borders	1
Shetland Islands	2
Stirling	1

The Scottish Government has published statutory guidance on the Schools (Consultation)(Scotland) Act 2010 - Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Act 2010: guidance - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) - which sets out the Scottish Government’s expectations in relation to mothballing schools.

Question reference: S6W-27674

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 20 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 3 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what it anticipates the impact will be of Aberdeenshire Council reportedly receiving only 20 of the 44 newly qualified secondary school teachers it requested for the coming school year.

We recognise there is a challenge around the recruitment of teachers in certain geographical areas and in certain subjects. It is for this reason that we have manually allocated Preference Waiver Payment (PWP) probationers this year. Manually allocating PWPs will ensure those probationers are placed in the areas who have the most difficulties in securing probationers.

I recently met with Aberdeenshire Council to discuss their concerns about teacher recruitment and probationer allocations. The Council indicated that they welcomed the approach taken to probationer allocations this year, which has resulted in an increase on the number of PWPs allocated compared to last year.

Question reference: S6W-27692

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 20 May 2024
Current Status: Answered by Neil Gray on 3 June 2024

To ask the Scottish Government what information it holds on what the current waiting times are for hearing aids, broken down by NHS board.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on waiting times for hearing aids centrally.

Statistics on audiology waiting times are included within Public Health Scotland’s (PHS) 18 weeks referral to treatment (RTT) publication but this does not include specialty-level data. This publication is based on a dataset that collects information on waiting times for complete patient pathways from initial referral to first treatment.