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The Scottish Government wants all children and young people to attain the highest standard of health and wellbeing possible, but we know some patients are waiting too long and we’re determined to do more and our Budget will provide a record £21.7 billion for health and social care.

We recognise that the current levels of paediatric tooth extractions in hospital are too high - our aim is to reduce the number of children requiring referral as much as possible.

We continue to invest in our flagship preventative programme Childsmile, which provides oral health interventions for all children in Scotland, as well as targeted measures for children from the most vulnerable backgrounds.

The Programme has supported significant improvements in child oral health in Scotland and a narrowing in child oral health inequality over the longer term.

The 2024 National Dental Inspection Programme results show the gap between P1 children with no obvious tooth decay, living in the most and least deprived areas, is at its lowest on record – decreasing from 32.2 percentage points in 2010 to 23.5 percentage points in 2024.

These figures also show three quarters of Primary 1 children have no obvious decay – this is up from 45% in 2003.

The Scottish Government has not undertaken analysis of the extent to which GP surgeries are offering an online appointment booking system for patients since the regulations were changed in 2022.

The Scottish Government does not have a role in assessing the performance of GP contractors as those contracts are between GP practices and NHS boards. GP practices are expected to regularly consider whether it is desirable, in order to meet the reasonable needs of their registered patients, to increase the proportion of appointments which are made available online to their registered patients and if it is desirable, to increase the proportion of those appointments. The needs of every practice population differ and the Scottish Government is not in a position to determine, at a national level, what the arrangements in any individual practice should be.

While we work with NHS Health Boards through planning to make best use of existing NHS resources and capacity, we will continue to consider use of the private sector in a structured and prioritised manner. However, it is for local NHS health boards to determine how they use the private sector and to agree any contractual arrangements.

According to the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001, the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) is responsible for producing and publishing data and intelligence on the social services workforce in Scotland, including the early learning and childcare workforce. As an Accredited Official Statistics provider (meaning they comply with the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) Code of Practice for Statistics) they publish a number of reports that may be of interest to you.

The first is the yearly “Scottish Social Service Sector: Report on Workforce Data”. This report combines administrative data from the Care Inspectorate with data collected by the SSSC directly from local authorities to form a comprehensive picture of the paid workforce employed in the social service sector in Scotland. The report includes data on headcounts and staffing in the sector. The report also clarifies that it is not possible to calculate turnover as the annual collections do not capture data on staff who join and leave a service wholly between the reference dates. The alternative measure of staffing change to turnover used by the SSSC is the stability index (SI) which measures the proportion of staff who have been retained from the previous year and is contained within this report.

The SSSC also publishes an annual “Workforce Skills Report”, which looks at the current provision of qualifications for the adult social care, children's residential care and early years workforce, and demand for those qualifications. It also looks at barriers to undertaking qualifications.

You might also wish to note that the SSSC publishes an annual “Staff vacancies in care services report”. This report is jointly published with the Care Inspectorate, and provides data on vacancies reported by care services as at 31 December each year. It presents data on the number of registered care services with a vacancy, the number of actual vacancies that services say they had using whole time equivalent (WTE) data, and data on the reasons why services have reported that vacancies are hard to fill.

Finally, in April 2025, the SSSC published the “Register Leavers Survey Report”, which gives an insight into leavers from the social work, social care and children and young people workforce. It examines who is leaving the SSSC Register, why and where they are moving to. This report is based on data from 2,003 people who left the Register between August and December 2024. This is the first collection of this data, but the intention is to continue to collect this to gain a deeper understanding of why people leave the sector.

The Scottish Government recognises that the single most important driver of the quality of a child’s early learning and childcare(ELC) experience is a highly skilled, highly qualified workforce.

The Scottish Government provides a range of financial and logistical support to early learning and childcare (ELC) practitioners seeking to upskill through formal qualifications.

(a) Financial Support

In 2024-25, the Scottish Government allocated over £8 million to support Skills Development Scotland to deliver Modern Apprenticeships in childcare.

A tuition fee grant of up to £1,820 is available via the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) through the Part-Time Fee Grant (PTFG) for individuals with a personal income of £25,000 or less. This funding supports eligible higher education courses and professional development at SCQF Levels 7–10, delivered by approved providers in Scotland. This funding is available to those working in childcare who are looking to study for a degree or college-based qualification.

The Scottish Government is also providing funding to enable 100 practitioners to study Masters degrees at the Universities of Strathclyde and Aberdeen to support their early years practice.

(b) Logistical Support

Practitioners benefit from a range of logistical support options to help them upskill while continuing to work in ELC. Many training providers offer flexible routes such as part-time, online or modular learning, enabling practitioners to balance study with existing commitments.

Work-based qualifications, including Modern and Technical Apprenticeships, allow staff to gain experience and qualifications on the job. In addition, many ELC employers support professional development by providing study leave, protected learning time and mentoring.

Practitioners can also access resources through the Scottish Social Services Council’s Continuous Professional Learning (CPL) portal, which offers a range of ELC-specific training opportunities and guidance.

Until June 2024, daycare of children staff registered with the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC)were required to complete a minimum of 60 hours — or 10 days — of Continuous Professional Learning (CPL) over each 5-year registration period. This equated to at least 12 hours of CPL per year. This requirement applied to all staff registered with the SSSC, including full-time, part-time, sessional, self-employed and agency workers.

This information is not available broken down by qualification level or local authority.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37812 on 4 June 2025.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers

The Scottish Government has not undertaken any such analysis. However, research undertaken by Public Health Scotland shows that the best experiences for children are found where professionals hold higher-level qualifications specific to early childhood, or those with a background in early years methodology, and where there is a range of staff with complementary skills in settings.

Scottish charity law says that an organisation set up to be a political party or to advance a political party cannot be a charity. However, under the law charities are permitted to campaign on political issues provided that:

• It is advancing their charitable purposes
• Their governing document does not prevent the activity
• They are not advancing a political party
• They can show this is acting in the charity’s interests

The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator’s position is that political campaigning – such as advocating for or against changes in government policy or legislation – is a legitimate way for some charities to pursue their aims.

The Scottish Government agrees with the Regulator’s position; charities play a vital role in civil society, and it is right that they have the ability to advocate for change that aligns with their charitable purposes.