- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 30 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 21 February 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many teachers who qualified in each of the last five years have secured permanent positions, broken down by (a) subject and (b) local authority.
Answer
Data on post-induction scheme teacher employment broken down by subject, Local Authority, contract type (permanent/temporary) and mode of working are published on the Post-Probationer Teacher Employment Dashboard, here: https://scotland.shinyapps.io/sg-post-probationer-employment-dashboard/
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 30 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 21 February 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many teachers are employed on a (a) permanent, (b) temporary and (c) supply contract, broken down by local authority.
Answer
The latest available data on teacher contract type, broken down by permanent and temporary, are published in the 2023 Teacher Census Supplementary Statistics here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/teacher-census-supplementary-statistics/
Data on supply teachers is not collected or held by central government.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Friday, 07 February 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Ivan McKee on 21 February 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what the estimated carbon emissions savings have been as a result of installing solar panels on government-owned buildings in each of the last five years.
Answer
The carbon saved in the last 5 financial years is
2023-24 – 51.25 tCO2e
2022-23 – 113.94 tCO2e
2021-22 - 56.8 tCO2e
2020-21 – 41 tCO2e
2019-20 – 20.6 tCO2e
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 21 February 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how much has been spent on supply teachers in primary schools in each local authority area in each year since 1999.
Answer
Data on how much each local authority spends on supply teachers is not held or collected by central government.
Data on local authority expenditure on teachers is available from the Local Government Financial statistics data collection. The latest figures are available from LFR01 at Scottish local government finance statistics 2023-24.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 21 February 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many teachers have been signed off work as a result of having been attacked in school in each local authority area in each year since 1999.
Answer
This information is not held centrally.
- Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 04 February 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 21 February 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what funding arrangement with local authorities has been developed to support learning for pupils whilst they are receiving treatment in children’s hospitals.
Answer
Local authorities have the statutory responsibility for delivering education and the statutory duty to make special arrangements for any affected pupils to receive education elsewhere than at a school or other educational establishment as a result of prolonged ill health. The Scottish Government provides funding to local authorities primarily by means of a block grant and it is for local councils to manage the allocation of their resources and the level of services that are delivered, including for education. In the 2023-24 financial year, the latest figure available, spending by local authorities reached a record high of over £1 billion from the Scottish Government for additional support for learning. This represents an increase from the £540 million spending allocated for this purpose in 2012-13.
Furthermore, the Scottish Government has published guidance on the education of children and young people unable to attend school due to ill health. The purpose of our guidance is to provide advice and information for local authorities in relation to their statutory duty to make special arrangements for any affected pupils/ This includes guidance on making alternative arrangements in instances where a child or young person is either staying in hospital, or they have a health condition which means they are often in and out of hospital. Our guidance is available through the following web link: Introduction - Education of children unable to attend school due to ill health: guidance - gov.scot.
- Asked by: Richard Leonard, MSP for Central Scotland, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Friday, 31 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Dorothy Bain on 21 February 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many reports in each of the five calendar years prior to the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Act 2022 coming into force were made to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) under the (a) Explosives Act 1875, (b) Environmental Protection Act 1990, (c) Fireworks Act 2003, (d) Fireworks (Scotland) Regulations 2004, (e) Antisocial Behaviour (Scotland) Act 2004, for the inappropriate use of fireworks and pyrotechnic articles, (f) Manufacture and Storage of Explosives Regulations 2005 and (g) Pyrotechnic Articles (Safety) Regulations 2010, and how many subsequent (i) prosecutions and (ii) convictions there were.
Answer
The following tables have been produced in answer to the question above. It should be noted that cases which are reported in any given year may not result in prosecutions or convictions until subsequent years.
Explosives Act 1985
Year | Charges reported | Charges prosecuted | Charges resulting in a conviction |
2017 | 21 | 7 | 5 |
2018 | 10 | 2 | 2 |
2019 | 10 | 7 | 5 |
2020 | 13 | 1 | 0 |
2021 | 7 | 3 | 0 |
Environmental Protection Act 1990
Year | Charges reported | Charges prosecuted | Charges resulting in a conviction |
2017 | 355 | 28 | 13 |
2018 | 268 | 30 | 13 |
2019 | 185 | 35 | 15 |
2020 | 158 | 17 | 7 |
2021 | 74 | 21 | 11 |
Fireworks Act 2003
Year | Charges reported | Charges prosecuted | Charges resulting in a conviction |
2017 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2018 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
2019 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2020 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2021 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Fireworks (Scotland) Regulations 2004
Year | Charges reported | Charges prosecuted | Charges resulting in a conviction |
2017 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2018 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2019 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2020 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2021 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Antisocial Behaviour (Scotland) Act 2004 [1](where fireworks and/or pyrotechnics were mentioned in the charge).
Year | Charges reported | Charges prosecuted | Charges resulting in a conviction |
2017 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2018 | 5 | 0 | 0 |
2019 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
2020 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2021 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Manufacture and Storage of Explosives Regulations 2005
Year | Charges reported | Charges prosecuted | Charges resulting in a conviction |
2017 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2018 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2019 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2020 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2021 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Pyrotechnics Articles (Safety) Regulations 2010
Year | Charges reported | Charges prosecuted | Charges resulting in a conviction |
2017 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2018 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2019 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2020 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2021 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
[1] These figures are based on a key word search on the relevant database. This is the only viable method by which the figures could be collated. These figures may be imperfect due to the possibility of human error at the reporting stage.
- Asked by: Douglas Lumsden, MSP for North East Scotland, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
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Date lodged: Thursday, 30 January 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Jenny Gilruth on 21 February 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how many pupil support assistants are employed in schools, broken down by local authority.
Answer
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 12 February 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Neil Gray on 20 February 2025
To ask the Scottish Government how often it meets the National Specialist Services Committee; when it last met the committee, and what was discussed.
Answer
The Scottish Government attend the National Specialist Services Committee (NSSC) who meet quarterly. Apologies were provided for the most recent meeting on 25 November 2024.
Discussions at the 25 November meeting included:
- Finance Update
- Requests for New Designations
- Approved Designations
- De-designations
- Designated Services – Assurance Reporting
- Hyperbaric Medicine
- New Commissions/ Business Cases for Prioritisation - Overview of Business Cases & Scoring Process
- National Planning and Networks Update
- Reviews update
- NSD Highlight Report
- Any Other Business:
- Planning Process
- Implications to new NSSC Governance
- New Governance process for SLAs
- Asked by: Rhoda Grant, MSP for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Thursday, 06 February 2025
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Current Status:
Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 20 February 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what consideration has been given to the potential for soil carbon losses when increasing tree cover with the aim to capture carbon, through its tree planting targets.
Answer
The UK Forestry Standard applies requirements to minimise soil carbon losses when creating new woodlands. No planting is supported in Scotland on soils with peat exceeding 50 cm depth. In addition recently revised guidance for soil cultivation effectively limits ploughing of organic soils of less than 10 cm depth.