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The employer-led DYW Regional Groups and School Coordinators work with specialist partners and third sector organisations to support young people who are furthest from the labour market, including disabled young people, into positive destinations.

DYW Regional Groups collect data across the 4 DYW Key Performance Indicators. One of these focusses on equalities and captures data on the number of young people from target groups (which includes disabled young people) who have participated in a universal or bespoke employer engagement activity, facilitated by the Regional Group and / or School Coordinator. We are working with Regional Groups to capture more data for this indicator.

As outlined in my previous answer, the Scottish Government has continued to invest an additional £15m per year since 2019-20 to help local authorities respond to the individual needs of children and young people. This investment is monitored via information collected through the annual school staff census. The latest figures show that this funding has helped contribute to the highest recorded number of support staff in schools, 16,606 in 2022.

We are also providing local authorities with £145.5m in this year's budget to protect teacher numbers and support staff.

Any financial decisions regarding these investments are subject to future budgetary processes.

We are committed to addressing violence against women and girls and acknowledge the crucial role that Rape Crisis centres across Scotland play in providing support to victim-survivors. Frontline services for women and girls affected by gender-based violence are crucial and that is why we are investing over £5m for the Rape Crisis network through our annual £19m Delivering Equally Safe (DES) fund.DES funding runs until March 2025.

As set out in the answer to question S6W-23870, the Strategic Board for Teacher Education is looking at issues around the recruitment and retention of teachers in Scotland in detail, including how the Teacher Induction Scheme operates.

All applications for the Teacher Induction Scheme are based on personal choice and the Scottish Government cannot direct probationary teachers to opt for the Preference Waiver Payment.

The announcement in the Scottish Budget 2024-25 signalled the Scottish Government’s intent to explore the reintroduction of a Public Health Supplement. The exploratory work will include considering options for the design of any such supplement.

Funding of over £11 million is provided each year to directly support pupils with complex additional support needs and to support services to children and families.

This includes a total of £10.7 million each year for 7 grant-aided special schools and a combined total of £800k to CALL Scotland, ENQUIRE and the Scottish Sensory Centre to help local authorities to meet the educational needs of children and young people with complex communication and sensory needs.

Through grant funding conditions targets or milestones are agreed between Scottish Government and the grantee. Progress is reported on and recorded through both quarterly reports and an annual report summarising outcomes and performance against the agreed targets or milestones.

The Scottish Government is working with local government partners through the Additional Support for Learning Project Board to deliver the recommendations of the 2020 additional support for learning review by March 2026.

As outlined in our updated action plan , published in November 2022, we have committed to a refresh the Supporting Children’s Learning Code of Practice. This will ensure that it fully supports schools and local authorities to fulfil their duties under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004. Initial progress on this work was set out in our second progress report , published in November 2022. Further progress has been made during 2023 and will continue this year.

A further progress update on the delivery of the action plan, including developments on the code of practice, is due to be published in May 2024.

The Scottish Government recognises the vital work that Rape Crisis centres across Scotland do to provide support for survivors of sexual violence. We will continue to work collaboratively with our stakeholders, including the Rape Crisis network, to develop a future funding model that will ensure a focus on prevention and the delivery of high quality, accessible specialist services for all women and children experiencing any form of violence against women and girls in line with the principles outlined in the Independent Funding Review.

The 2024-25 draft Scottish Budget document, published on 19 December, set out a budget of £130.1m for community eyecare services. This increase in the budget provision supports national provision of free universal NHS eye examinations, NHS optical vouchers for eligible persons to help with the cost of glasses and contact lenses, and new NHS services such as the Community Glaucoma Service which will enable patients to be seen closer to home.

The Scottish Government can confirm that patients in Edinburgh and the Lothians will continue to benefit as recipients of these national policies.

The Scottish Government has a contract for the provision of an electronic vote counting solution between the Scottish Ministers and Fujitsu Limited dated 16 October 2020. This contract delivered electronic vote counting services for the Scottish Local Government elections held on 5 May 2022. The software used for electronic vote counting is specialist elections software provided by a separate elections company, as a sub-contractor to Fujitsu. The electronic counting solution has already been tested rigorously, and independently assessed as secure and suitable, and successfully delivered the national Local Government elections in May 2022. The same elections specialist company provided the software that successfully counted votes and delivered the Local Government elections results in 2012 and 2017, as sub-contractors to a different prime contractor, CGI. The current contract also covers electronic vote counting services for Local Government by-elections held up to 31 January 2027. The solution remains in live operation for by-elections and there is no current intention to repeat the rigorous and independent testing that has already taken place.