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We recognise the importance of having access to meaningful data in relation to improving respiratory services and understanding respiratory care in Scotland. Due to the extremely challenging fiscal position the Scottish Government is facing, we have not been able to progress the development of the national respiratory audit programme this financial year. We aim to do so in the financial year 2025 to 2026.

The Graduate Apprenticeship Enhancement Group was established in spring 2024 to make recommendations on the development of future policy and a delivery model for GAs in line with Scotland’s economic growth opportunities, skills need, and the wider reform of the post-16 education landscape. The Group's membership includes the Scottish Funding Council, Skills Development Scotland, Colleges Scotland, Universities Scotland, and representation from businesses.

The Group’s work is evidence and data informed and is taken forward through workstreams. It will include engagement with employers and their industry representatives, public sector partners and apprentices. The Group anticipates completing its work over the winter.

We are committed to working with the community sector and other stakeholders to ensure the delivery of renewable energy comes with benefits for people in Scotland. This includes shared ownership, which has a vital role to play in a just transition by giving communities the chance to make an investment in a commercially owned renewable energy project.

Through our Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) we provide online guidance, resources, and support to access funding and contractors to enable communities to engage with shared ownership opportunities. Building on the progress we have made to date, the Scottish Government is progressing work on the commitment in the Onshore Wind Sector Deal to develop a framework of practical approaches to support and encourage community shared ownership models, to assist communities, and developers and funders to engage in shared ownership opportunities. There will be opportunities for the community sector to engage with this process as work progresses.

While the Scottish Government sets the strategic policy for the NHS in Scotland, it is NHS Boards and healthcare professionals locally who have responsibility for both service delivery and ensuring people receive the right care for them, taking into account relevant guidance, local service needs and priorities for investment.

The Health and Social Care Standards set out the expectation that care should be provided by health and social care professionals based on the most relevant evidence, guidance and best practice, as is appropriate to their profession and patient group.

In May 2023 the Scottish Government published an analysis of survey data of heath boards' arrangements for the care and support of individuals with ME/CFS, which sought to map ME/CFS support and service provision and review awareness and implementation of the 2021 NICE guideline.

We have since gathered updated information on ME/CFS care from every health board in Scotland and are currently preparing to publish an updated report later this month.

Across government, particularly in the Digital Directorate, a number of teams meet regularly with OfCom and mobile phone providers to discuss a wide range of issues. As social tariffs remain a reserved matter for the UK Government, the majority of these discussions do not focus on social tariffs however the exceptions to this are listed below:

The Digital Inclusion Alliance is the proposed national delivery mechanism to bring together the public, private and third sectors to jointly agree how to tackle digital exclusion through long-term, sustainable approaches.

The work to establish the Alliance commenced in November 2023 following approval in the Connecting Scotland Full Business Case. We are currently scoping out options for the financial and legal structure of the Digital Inclusion Alliance and once these are finalised and agreed with Ministers the Alliance will be formally constituted.

To help us co-design the focus of the Alliance and define the role of the third and public sector partnership within that Alliance, we established a Short Life Working Group in March 2024. This group is co-convened by Scottish Government and COSLA using the principles of the Verity House Agreement. Its members are the key organisations in the public and third sector who will work in partnership within the Alliance.

The Scottish Government has provided funding to Connect for this financial year to establish and host the Scottish Assembly of Parents and Carers. This new model will enhance the diversity of parental voices to help inform policy and provide advice and challenge as we drive forward reform of our education system.

Additionally, our Anti-Racism in Education Programme (AREP) brings together education bodies and organisations and individuals with anti-racist expertise and lived experience. The AREP contains a number of ambitions which seek to support teachers, school staff and leaders at all levels in the education sector to embed antiracist approaches.

We expect schools and local authorities to record all incidents of bullying and violence in schools.

In 2019 we introduced a consistent national approach to recording and monitoring bullying incidents in schools. HMIe carried out a thematic review of approaches to recording and monitoring incidents of bullying in schools and published its report in February 2023.

As part of its response to this review, the Scottish Government established a working group to review Respect for All, its national anti-bullying guidance as well as the supplementary guidance on recording and monitoring bullying incidents. The updated guidance will be published in November 2024.

The current See Hear Strategy which was published in 2014 still exists to support children and adults who have deafness, sight loss and dual sensory loss to access the support and social care they need.

See Hear Leads, within local authorities, are in place to help drive progress across priority areas within each local partnership.

Since March 2023 policy officials have been engaged in extensive discussions with stakeholders, delivery partners and people with lived experience to hear what has been working well and any challenges people with Sensory Loss were facing in living a good life. Discussions are taking place across Scottish Government to identify other areas of policy work which can help resolve some of those challenges. The publication date of the refreshed strategy will be announced in due course.

Education Scotland provides a range of professional learning opportunities for school leaders, which focus on anti-racism. These include Into Headship, Connected and Collaborative Systems Leadership, Aspiring to Middle Leadership, and Middle Leaders Leading Change, as well as the award winning Building Racial Literacy Programme (BRL) and the Anti-Racism Mentors project. All Professional Learning resources are subject to review and, as part of the evaluation cycle, updated based on participant feedback.

In addition to this, the recent external evaluation of the BRL programme concluded that as a national anti-racist professional learning opportunity, it achieves its goal in supporting participants to become racially literate, with them feeling more confident in challenging discrimination and racist incidents. While the programme has welcomed a wide range of school leaders across Scotland, the evaluation identified the need for enhanced anti-racist professional development for school and system leaders. This in part led to the development of Education Scotland’s new Anti-Racism Mentors project being piloted this year.

Beyond Education Scotland’s offers, a range of local authorities and third sector organisations have different levels of professional learning available as well. These are not subject to formal Scottish Government review processes.