Seòmar agus comataidhean

In March 2023, the Scottish Government ran an endometriosis public awareness campaign in partnership with Young Scot, targeted primarily at increasing young people’s awareness of the condition.

Following the campaign a post-evaluative survey ran to measure the impact of the information on the audience. Key statistics are as follows:

• 82% of young people agreed or strongly agreed that they are more informed about the symptoms of endometriosis
• 71% of young people agreed or strongly agreed that they are more informed about how to support someone with endometriosis
• 74% of young people agreed or strongly agreed that they would know where to get support or what steps they could take if they thought they may have endometriosis
• 97% of young people who visited young.scot/Endometriosis found it useful or very useful

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all students with a long term medical condition or additional support needs are supported as they study in further and higher education. Colleges and universities are autonomous bodies with responsibility for the management of their own student support services.

The Scottish Government is currently considering all the recommendations made, including the recommendation to establish a national implementation group.

Given the broad scope of the recommendations, and the seriousness of the issues raised, it is important that sufficient time is taken to fully plan how any actions will be taken forward.

We will update Parliament at the earliest opportunity.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-18928 on 21 June 2023. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

Payment reform will be implemented on 1 November 2023. Therefore, it is not possible at this stage to make an assessment on the impact of payment reform on the recruitment of dentists in Dumfries and Galloway and the level of deregistration of adult patients from NHS dental services.

The main purpose of payment reform is to improve access to NHS dental services and thereby reducing the number of deregistrations. This will be done by replacing the existing care and treatment fees with a new set priced at levels that we believe will incentivise dentists to provide a full range of NHS care and treatment.

During the first trimester, all mainland NHS Boards within Scotland are able to offer surgical abortions, although access to surgical abortion is limited in some Health Board areas.

Currently no Health Board in Scotland is able to provide second trimester surgical abortions; if a patient is unable to access a medical abortion locally in the second trimester (over 20 weeks’ gestation), their Health Board will refer them to a service in England for treatment.

Given the different approaches to assessment the pandemic has necessitated since 2020, it is difficult to directly compare this year’s exam results with any other year. However, in 2023, 20% of Higher entries by candidates from the most deprived areas (SIMD quintile 1) resulted in a grade A. This is higher than in 2017 (18.1%).

We use a basket of measures (including the 13 NIF measures, ACEL data and school leaver attainment) to measure the attainment gap as different conclusions may be drawn depending upon the data under consideration. For example, the attainment gap at National 5 has narrowed between 2017 and 2023. It is therefore unrealistic to assess the performance of the education system via a single measure (such as Higher A grades).

This year’s exam results showed significant progress with overall pass rates for National 5, Highers and Advanced Highers being above those in 2019.

The proportion of A grades for National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher were also above those in 2019.

It is testament to the resilience and hard work of our young people that overall, this is a strong set of results in an exam year.

The Forestry Grant Scheme opened for applications in 2015 as part of the Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP) and initially had a 7 year budget of £36m per year. The Forestry Grants budget has since been reviewed on an annual basis, as part of the wider Scottish Government Budget process, to reflect the Climate Change Plan woodland creation target and on-going legal commitments.

Forestry Grant Scheme contracts are issued by Scottish Forestry, and underspends can occur where insufficient applications are received or approved schemes are delayed. Underspends occurred in 2015-16 and 2016-17 due to insufficient applications being received in the first two years of FGS. Since then underspends have occurred in 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23, due to combination insufficient applications and delays with approved projects being implemented.

The Scottish Funding Council’s “College Infrastructure Strategy: The Approach to Delivering Scotland’s College Infrastructure”, was published in November 2022. Following on from publication of the strategy, the Infrastructure Investment Plan for colleges, due to be published by autumn 2024, will identify future infrastructure investment needed for a sustainable college estate. The work on delivering the plan has begun and will include baselining the condition of the college estate.

We are grateful to Heart Research UK for their continued work to prevent, treat and cure heart disease in Scotland.

We recognise the scale and impact of heart disease in Scotland and have set out our strategic direction to address this in our Heart Disease Action Plan (2021).

The plan outlines a collaborative approach and acknowledges the important role of the third sector in minimising preventable heart disease and ensuring that everyone with suspected heart disease has timely and equitable access to diagnosis treatment and care.