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The Education (Scotland) Act 1980 places a statutory responsibility on all local authorities to manage and maintain the school estate across Scotland. The Government is providing significant investment to local authorities through the £1.8bn Scotland’s Schools for the Future programme to replace the worst condition schools throughout the country.

The Scottish Government published guidance in 2013 for landowners considering woodland creation on agricultural land. Landowners developing forestry proposals on agricultural land are expected to consider the potential impacts on the local agricultural economy, taking into account the local context. Projects seeking funding under the Forestry Grant Scheme are expected to have complied with this Scottish Government guidance.

As the regulatory authority for forestry and woodland creation proposals, Forestry Commission Scotland also seeks advice from the local Scottish Government Rural Payments and inspections Division area offices to help determine whether proposals are acceptable or need to be amended. The aim is always to achieve sustainable well-integrated land use delivering a broad range of objectives. Where a planning application is required, this would be for the relevant planning authority, in this case Dumfries and Galloway, to consider.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The Scottish Government do not collect information on the number of nursery places available. Information on capacity is collected by the Care Inspectorate. They do not publish figures at local authority level but Scotland level figures are available on their website (http://www.careinspectorate.com/index.php/publications-statistics/19-public/statistics).

The Financial Review of Early Learning and Childcare (Scottish Government, 2016) estimated that the average unit cost (cost per hour per child) in local authority settings was £5.45 for 3 and 4 year olds and £7.74 for 2 year olds. In funded provider settings (private and third sector), the unit cost for 0-5 year olds was estimated to average £3.70.

Information on local authority pre-primary education capital expenditure is provided to Scottish Government by local authorities. This includes, but is not limited to, nursery provision. The most up to date data is for 2015-16 and is shown in the following table.

In September 2016, the Scottish Government published “The Financial Review of early learning and childcare in Scotland: the current landscape” (http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0050/00506148.pdf ). This shows (page 53) that over the financial years 2014-15 to 2016-17 the Scottish Government has provided £170 million capital funding to local authorities to support implementation of the early learning and childcare elements of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 expenditure. A further £30 million of capital funding was provided to local authorities in 2017-18. It is for each local authority to decide how it will utilise these funds.

The information is given in the following table. It shows by local authority the number of teachers who started the Into Headship programme for aspiring headteachers. Cohorts start in May/June each year. The qualification is aimed at those teachers whose next post will be that of a head teacher, likely to be within two to three years.

Scotland is participating in the Teacher Questionnaire of the 2018 administration of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This will cover teacher job satisfaction and an assessment of the factors they believe are hindering instruction.

The Scottish Government has instructed no external legal advice in relation to the Children and Young People (Information Sharing) (Scotland) Bill.

Details are as follows:

External Legal Advice