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The Scottish Government has received no complaints from local authorities in relation to the Health and Wellbeing Census.

Local authorities administer the Census in their schools to help identify the issues children and young people are concerned about and to tailor their learning, particularly in Personal and Social Education, and their advice and support. These issues may relate to food and nutrition, sleep, relationships, bullying, sexual health, substance use, physical activity as well as social media use and mental and emotional health and wellbeing.

The Census is entirely voluntary, both for local authorities to undertake and to parents/carers and pupils to take part in. This has been made clear to local authorities throughout.

We are committed to ensuring that all children and young people get the support that they need to reach their full potential.

The Education (Additional Support for Learning) Act 2004 (as amended) places duties on education authorities to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils. Education authorities can ask other agencies (including social work services, NHS Health Boards and Skills Development Scotland) for help in carrying out their duties under the Act.

Children and young people who are unable to attend school due to ill health should continue, wherever they can, to access education. This includes children and young people who are absent from school due to the effects from long Covid.

Where illness leads to prolonged absence from school, Section 40 of the Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc. Act 2000 places duties on education authorities to educate children and young people to their fullest potential and to make special arrangements for the pupil to receive education elsewhere than at school. Alternative educational arrangements could be provided, for example, at home or within a hospital setting.

Guidance to education authorities and other agencies on their duties under the 2004 Act is provided through the statutory Supporting Learners' Code of Practice. Education authorities and other agencies are further supported through guidance on Supporting Children and Young People with Healthcare Needs in Schools and guidance on the Education of Children Unable to Attend School Due to Ill Health.

Resilience structures in Scotland are designed to be adaptable and responsive to a wide range of risks.

Ministers regularly receive briefing on specific risks or emergencies throughout the year and the Scottish Government’s resilience arrangements constantly monitor for emerging issues and threats.

In the autumn of 2021, recognising the heightened risk of concurrent events – including COVID, winter weather, and supply chain issues – additional reporting and monitoring arrangements were put in place to ensure Ministers retain a close oversight of the complex and overlapping risk picture. Since 30 September, this has included daily reporting and weekly meetings of SGORR, with assessments on the key concurrent risks facing Government and planning activity being taken.

The Scottish Government Reducing Risks in Schools guidance contains a range of mitigations, such as use of face coverings, distancing requirements in schools and on school transport, and guidance for visitors and in-school events. This guidance is currently under active review, with input this week from the COVID-19 Education Recovery Group and the Advisory Sub-Group on Education and Children's Issues . A new version will be published this week. The guidance will remain under regular review and, where the scientific advice supports it, mitigations will be enhanced or removed as appropriate.

This information is publically available on the Scottish Adoption Register’s Website in the Annual Report for 2021-21

The Scottish Government does not set a target timescale for assessing applications for grant assistance to deliver affordable housing above the applicable affordable housing investment benchmark level.

Using information from our Housing and Regeneration Programme system (HARP), we have compiled the following table showing the average calendar days from the initial tender application submission date to the actual tender approval date for those projects submitted at above benchmark level over the period Quarter 3 2017-18 to Quarter 2 2021-22. It should be noted, however, that while we encourage early engagement on likely project costs prior to tender applications being submitted, there can be instances where applications have missing information or require further, more detailed work by the grant applicant before they can be fully assessed.

The September 2019 Programme for Government commitment to develop proposals for a new medical school was paused in March 2020 due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. We are currently considering how this commitment can be implemented or linked to the new Programme for Government (PfG) Commitment to increase medical undergraduates by 100 per year and to double the number of Widening Access places over the lifetime of this parliament.

Scotland’s resilience response structures involve very well established mechanisms for coordinating clear public communications during emergencies, and organisations involved in the response will work together to ensure swift and accurate advice is provided across a range of media.

The specific emergency alert system in place in other countries, used for example to warn of earthquakes, utilises a technology known as Cell Broadcasting. Activating this capability on the UK telecoms network is a matter reserved to the UK Government, and we note that the introduction of this technology, initially anticipated for summer 2021, is now scheduled for early 2022. Scottish Government officials are working with their counterparts in the UK Government to ensure that the deployment of any such capability reflects the devolved responsibilities of our responder organisations.

The new statutory National Concessionary Bus Travel Scheme for Young People currently covers bus travel only, as does the existing statutory National Concessionary Travel Scheme for Older and Disabled People. The schemes do not extend to other modes of travel.

he Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist Office has funded nine research projects designed to improve our understanding of the longer term effects of the COVID-19 infection, or long COVID. Three projects focus on the prevalence and symptoms of long COVID. All started in early 2021 and will run for two years.

LTE2015.pdf (scot.nhs.uk) ‘Developing and validating a risk prediction model for long COVID-19’. Undertaken by the University of Edinburgh, in collaboration with Public Health Scotland, this research builds on the EAVE II study, originally funded by the Medical Research Council ( An Introduction to EAVE II | The University of Edinburgh ). EAVE II has used a pseudonymised patient dataset to track the COVID-19 pandemic as it unfolded across Scotland. This dataset will now be used to develop a model which will identify people at greatest risk of developing long COVID. In the course of developing that model, the research will generate data about the number of people in Scotland diagnosed with long COVID and their use of health services. This project will cover the population as a whole, including children.

lte2006.pdf (scot.nhs.uk) ‘Defining and understanding the longer-term effects of COVID-19: a mixed methods study exploring the frequency, nature, and impact of ‘long COVID’ in the Scottish population’. Undertaken by the university of Glasgow, this study will identify how many people continue to be unwell, their symptoms, and how it affects their lives. Scottish adults who had a positive COVID-19 test, and a negative test comparison group, will be sent an SMS message inviting them to take part in the study. If they agree, they will answer questions about their health before and after COVID-19, and any effect on their lives, with the questions repeated at regular intervals. This project will cover people aged 16+.

LTE2008.pdf (scot.nhs.uk) ‘COVID-19: Tracking Persistent Symptoms in Scotland (TraPSS)’ – undertaken by the University of the West of Scotland. This project aims toimprove our understanding of long COVID in the Scottish population, and particularly in people whose original symptoms were relatively mild. The current evidence describing the types of symptoms other studies have reported will be reviewed, and people will be surveyed at different stages of recovery to find out what kinds of persistent symptoms they have. The project will survey adults aged 18+.

Currently the best source of estimated long COVID prevalence data for Scotland is the monthly Office for National Statistics (ONS) reporting on ‘Estimates of the prevalence of self-reported long COVID and associated activity limitation, using UK Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey data’.The most recent report is here.

Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk) This showed that, over the four-week period ending 31 October 2021, an estimated 99,000 people (95% confidence interval: 89,000 to 109,000) in the private residential population in Scotland (1.87%; 95% CI: 1.68% to 2.07%) reported experiencing long COVID of any duration. Detailed estimates by age group and symptoms are available for the UK, but this detail is not available for Scotland.