Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government has commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) to improve Community Urgent Care (CUC) pathways as part of the wider Urgent and Unscheduled Care Programme. In addition to validated nationally collected data from Public Health Scotland, an Unscheduled Care Improvement Dashboard is in creation which will consist of ‘data for improvement’ collected manually by each Health Board Area, which supports tracking of locally held data to reflect the impact of improvement activity, creating visibility of progress.

Work is also underway through an external partner to evaluate the Redesign of Urgent Care pathway through NHS 24 111 service which launched in 2020 and provides access to local Flow Navigation Centres and virtual A&E teams.This evaluation will assess impact on a range of measures, including patient and staff experience and assess what other outcomes are impacted by the service.

• The Scottish Government has commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) to improve Community Urgent Care (CUC) pathways as part of the wider Urgent and Unscheduled Care Programme.
• In addition to validated nationally collected data from Public Health Scotland, an Unscheduled Care Improvement Dashboard is in creation which will consist of ‘data for improvement’ collected manually by each Health Board Area, which supports tracking of locally held data to reflect the impact of improvement activity, creating visibility of progress.
• Work is also underway through an external partner to evaluate the Redesign of Urgent Care pathway through NHS 24 111 service which launched in 2020 and provides access to local Flow Navigation Centres and virtual A&E teams. This evaluation will assess impact on a range of measures, including patient and staff experience and assess what other outcomes are impacted by the service.

A&E performance remains below the levels we all wish to see, however, we continue to work closely with Boards to support delivery of sustained improvements across a range of areas.

Emergency Departments across NHS Scotland and the rest of the UK, continue to face sustained pressures. The combined impact of pandemic backlogs, Brexit-exacerbated staff shortages, and delayed discharges are all contributing to the challenges the NHS is facing, with significant pressure being placed on our urgent care services in particular.

Through our Urgent and Unscheduled Care Collaborative Programme, we are supporting Health Boards to take action to improve patient flow and reduce A&E delays through a range of actions such as: increasing community capacity such as hospital at home, optimising the use of early and effective triage, rapid decision-making and streaming to assessment areas.

The ‘Included, Engaged and Involved Part 2: Preventing and Managing School Exclusions’ guidance was published in 2017.

In June last year, I convened the first meeting of a Headteacher taskforce which focused on school exclusions. The topic of school exclusions was also discussed by a wide range of stakeholders, including local authorities, at the series of behaviour summits held between September and November last year.

In November, the Behaviour in Scottish Schools Research (BISSR) was also published, which provides the accurate national picture in relation to behaviour in Scotland’s schools. Local authority staff were interviewed as part of BISSR.

We are currently working with the Scottish Advisory Group on Relationships and Behaviour in Schools , which includes COSLA, to establish what actions are required to be included in the national action plan to respond to the findings of the summit process and BISSR. The national action plan will be published as soon as possible.

The number of properties expected to be liable for the Intermediate Property Rate (IPR) in 2024-2025 before any reliefs are applied is presented in the below tables, broken down in Table 1 by property class, and in Table 2 by council area. Property class is a classification used by Scottish Assessors to describe the type of property, and does not necessarily accurately reflect the use of a property. The Scottish Government does not hold property-level data on industry sectors.

These tables are based on the non-domestic valuation roll as at 1 October 2023.

Figures in these tables are rounded to the nearest 10.

Table 1: Number of properties liable for IPR in 2024-2025 by property class

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

With the exception of 2 prison cells at HMP Open Estate, Castle Huntly, all other cells across the SPS estate have access to natural light.

All prison cells have access to artificial light sufficient for reading purposes.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

SPS does not record this information. However, as defined in the Prison and Young Offenders Rules (Scotland) 2011, individuals must have, and do have, access to showering/washing facilities a minimum of every second day.

Scottish Government officials from the Gaelic and Scots team met with senior education officers of North Lanarkshire Council on 6 December to discuss matters relating to the recent consultation involving both Condorrat and Baird Memorial primary schools. Along with the meeting, the Scottish Government has also received correspondence from parents on this matter and officials have been following the consultation closely. There was an agreement to meet again in the new year.

Children and young people should learn in the environment which best suits their needs. Most children and young people’s need are met through a universal level of support in mainstream provision, however, there are clear exceptions to enable children and young people to learn in a special school or in a specialist unit. It is for local authorities to determine the most appropriate educational provision, taking account of their legal responsibilities and the individual circumstances and wishes of children, young people and their families. We are working with our stakeholders to refine the guidance available to local authorities on taking these decisions, including updating the additional support for learning code of practice.

Our support to local authorities for additional support for learning reached a record high of £830m in the year 2021-22. We have invested an additional £15m per year since 2019-20 and provide over £11m of funding to directly support pupils with complex additional support needs and services to children and families.

We currently have the highest recorded level of pupil support assistants. In 2022, 307 additional pupil support assistants were recruited, in addition to 1,036 recruited in the previous year, bringing the total number of pupil support assistants in Scotland to 16,606. This level of recruitment is a direct result of our continued investment of £15m each year to help schools and local authorities respond to the individual needs of children and young people and maintains our record levels of investment in these staff.

We have also recently outlined in our Programme for Government 2023-24 our commitment to work with teachers to provide additional professional learning opportunities while seeking to build on the Additional Support for Learning Action Plan.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

The assignment of probationer teachers to individual schools is a matter for each local authority.

The term additional support needs under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 applies where for whatever reason children or young people are unable to benefit from school education without the provision of additional support. Therefore, the information requested in relation to colleges and universities is not applicable.

In 2021, we published a Whole School Approach Framework to assist in supporting children and young people’s mental health in schools. This complements earlier work to provide a professional learning resource to support school staff.

We also continue to support local authorities with £16 million a year to ensure that every secondary school has access to counselling services, which are now in place across Scotland. School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools may have in place to support the health, emotional and social needs of young people.