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The Scottish Government is providing a variety of ways for teachers and practitioners to feed into the design process, including working with the following stakeholder groups:

• Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA)

• Scottish Council of Deans of Education (SCDE)

• General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS)

• Association of Directors of Education (ADES)

• Professional Associations and Trade Unions; including EIS, SSTA, NASUWT, SLS and AHDS.

• Scottish Government Strategic Board for Teacher Education

• Scottish Council of Independent Schools (SCIS)

• National education bodies

• Early Learning and Childcare representatives

• Community Learning and Development representatives

Children and young people with additional support needs continue to achieve and we continue to prioritise reducing the attainment gap in Scotland. The Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL) data shows that the attainment gap between mainstream school pupils with additional support needs and those pupils with no additional support needs, across all primary stages and for S3 Third Level or better, has reduced since 2021-2022.

Since 2019-20, we have continued to invest £15m per year to support local authorities and schools to respond to the individual needs of their children and young people. In 2022, 307 additional pupil support assistants were recruited as a direct result of this investment, supporting our ongoing commitment to reduce the attainment gap. We also provide over £11m of funding to directly support pupils with complex additional support needs and their families.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the experiences and outcomes for young people with additional support needs, which we have outlined in our Programme for Government 2023-24. Ministers will work with teachers to provide additional professional learning opportunities while seeking to build on the Additional Support for Learning Action Plan.

As announced in the statement to the Scottish Parliament on 12 December 2023, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education has arranged for HM Inspectors to carry out a national thematic inspection of mathematics in 2024. The report from the thematic inspection will be published in autumn 2024.

HM Inspectors have recently written to local authorities to outline the approach that they will take for this national thematic inspection.

The final thematic report will be developed by HM Inspectors and will be published on the Education Scotland website and shared with schools and local authorities. The document will summarise the findings of HM Inspectors and highlight what is working well, and what needs to improve.

As announced in the statement to the Scottish Parliament on 12 December 2023, the review of the maths curriculum framework will begin this year (2024), with a revised maths curriculum to be tested with teachers before the end of the year.

The Royal Blind School receives annual grant funding from the Scottish Government, which is used to support the direct delivery of specialist education and care provision for children and young people with complex additional support needs, including those with visual impairment. The key recurring grant objectives set out for the school in their annual grant letters since 2019-20 are:

• Provide high quality education and / or care to the children and young people who attend the Royal Blind School and Sight Scotland education outreach services.
• Continue to develop the delivery of peripatetic support to local authorities, children and young people with visual impairment.
• Identify collaboratively, the development objectives with all pupils, staff and stakeholders.
• Evidence and maintain the Royal Blind School’s leading position and its value to the provision and enhancement of good practice in education, learning and care for school age children with Visual Impairment and particularly those with complex additional support needs.
• Ensure the ongoing viability of the school, continue to be committed to attracting and developing alternative sources of income through commercial activity and partnership working.
• Improve and develop partnership opportunities with all stakeholders of the Royal Blind School.
• In addition to the core objectives set out above, two further objectives were set within specific years. These were not recurring objectives and were met within the years set.
• Throughout 2020-21 implement the actions/activities in the School Improvement Plan to ensure children and young people who attend the Royal Blind School receive high quality education and care.
• To continue to develop and operate the Learning Hub in order to provide support to local authorities, children and young people with visual impairment and their families and other agencies with visual impairment across Scotland; and provide by 31 March 2020 an evaluation of progress in the 2019-20 outcomes report.

To support work on advancing LGBTQI+ Equality, the Scottish Government provides funding to organisations such as LGBT Youth Scotland to promote equality of opportunity and inclusion for LGBTQI+ people.

The following table contains the funding and objectives for this funding provided to LGBT Youth Scotland since 2019.

The following amounts have been spent on safety improvements on the A96 between Inverness and Aberdeen in each of the last full three financial years:

In February 2023, the Scottish Government published its Draft Agricultural Reform List of Measures outlining the intention to develop future agricultural support conditionality options, which could recognise appropriate uptake of methane suppressing feed products by farmers. We are continuing to work with industry to establish options for recognising use of these products and other practices which can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Records show there has been no instances of road closures due to lack of adequate drainage on the A90 trunk road from Dundee to Aberdeen from 2019-20 to date.

Scottish Government officials engage regularly with local authorities and other partners with regard to the Affordable Housing Supply Programme.

One of the most difficult choices we have taken is to reduce the funding for our Affordable Housing Supply Programme. We will, however, still invest £556 million in 2024-25 to increase the delivery of more affordable homes, the majority of which will be for social rent, including supporting the acquisition of existing properties.

We remain focused on our target of delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032 and to support that we will bring forward the review scheduled for 2026-27 to 2024, which will concentrate on deliverability.

In addition, we are accelerating work with the financial community in Scotland, and elsewhere, to boost private sector investment and help deliver more homes.