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The Scottish Government acknowledges the important contribution Colleges make to both education and the economy, which is why we provided a 2.1% uplift in funding for the sector in this year’s Budget.

The Scottish Government also provided £560,000 in funding to Lantra, the sector skills body for land-based, aquaculture, and environmental conservation sectors. This funds Lantra Scotland’s 2025/26 workplan, that promotes careers in these sectors and highlights the economic and environmental value of investing in skills and supports efforts to attract and train skilled people in rural areas.

Operational decisions, including course provision and staffing, are a matter for individual colleges, who are best placed to respond to emerging trends in skills needs at local and regional level.

The Scottish Government contributes to attracting and equipping skilled people for rural and Island areas to promote the rewarding careers available and the economic and environmental benefits of investing in skills in the land-based, aquaculture and environment.

Operational decisions, including course provision and staffing, are a matter for individual colleges, who are best placed to respond to emerging trends in skills needs at local and regional level.

We are engaging industries and employers across Scotland, and will continue to do so, as we reform the post school education and skills system.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. Decisions about the fees for hospital education services are a matter for local authorities and NHS boards to consider as appropriate.

The Scottish Government is working with COSLA through the Joint Working Group on public engagement on Council Tax Reform. We have procured the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) to carry out expert and independent analysis to support this work.

The analysis is planned to be published in September 2025, in advance of any engagement activity. The budget for this independent analysis is £49,750, and is being managed within the existing resources.

The Scottish Funding Council’s final allocations to the college sector for 2025-26 provide a 2.6% sector increase in teaching funding compared to last year. Additionally no college sees a reduction in teaching funding in 2025-26 when compared with 2024-25.

Operational decisions, including course provision and staffing, are a matter for individual colleges, who are best placed to respond to emerging trends in skills needs at local and regional level.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government. Decisions about the fees for hospital education services are a matter for local authorities and NHS boards to consider as appropriate.

The Scottish Government does not hold this data. The General Teaching Council of Scotland (GTCS) is best placed to advise on how many newly qualified teachers progress each year to meet the Standard for Full Registration, through the Teacher Induction Scheme (TIS) or by the Flexible Route.

I recognise the importance of housing co-operatives and the need to support and encourage them. While we already have powers to make amendments to this section, given the importance of HMO licensing in protecting tenants in Scotland, any decision to make such a change should not be taken lightly, and certainly not before full consideration of any unintended consequences and mitigations had been undertaken. On that basis, the Scottish Government has no immediate plans to change the legislation relating to Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) licensing requirements.

England and Wales operate a different HMO licensing regime from Scotland.

While a patient has the right, at any time, to exercise choice and seek private treatment, we recognise that excessively long waits for NHS treatment are not acceptable.

We’re determined to reduce patient waits in the year ahead and our investment of £106 million additional funding will help us to deliver more than 150,000 extra appointments and procedures in 2025-26. The funding has been assigned to specialty areas for the year ahead where it can have the greatest impact against the longest waits – this includes £25 million for trauma and orthopaedics, £21 million for imaging, more than £12 million for ophthalmology, over £9 million for Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) and over £8.8 million for Gynaecology.

This funding is just part of our record investment of £21.7 billion for health and social care this year.

In support of the Budget and wider Public Service Reform agenda, the Scottish Government is proactively addressing the need to control workforce size.

From March 2022 to March 2025, the total workforce in the Scottish Government has reduced by 5%. This reduction has been achieved through prioritising reductions in contingent workers, natural attrition and enhanced recruitment controls. There are currently no plans for redundancies for this financial year.

As the Public Service Reform Strategy is taken forward we will establish how this will shape the future workforce plan for the Scottish Government organisation and the wider Civil Service.