Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government is committed to delivering a Net Zero, Wellbeing economy and a highly skilled workforce is critical to this ambition. Our National Strategy for Economic Transformation is clear that we must adapt our education and skills system to become more responsive and agile so that it can deliver on our key priorities.

Published in 2020, the Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan (CESAP) also provides a framework for green skills planning and investment across priority sectors directly affected in the transition to net zero: Energy, Construction, Transport, Manufacturing and Agriculture and land-use.

The Scottish Government Independent Commission to review land-based learning published their report (January 2023) with 22 recommendations on how to attract and improve the learning pathways to equip more people with the skills and knowledge needed to work in Scotland’s land-based and aquaculture sectors, including emerging green occupations that are crucial to our climate and nature targets. The Scottish Government is committed to considering the report and will produce a response in 2023.

This will support the development of a Just Transition Plan for Agriculture and Land Use.

It is the responsibility of Local Health and Social Care Partnerships to put in place services to meet local needs, including the needs of adults with ADHD.

The 2020 Programme for Government included a commitment to consider a National Clinical Pathway for ADHD. In order to deliver on this, the Scottish Government commissioned the National Autism Implementation Team (NAIT) to carry out a feasibility study to investigate how such a pathway would work and benefit adults diagnosed with ADHD. The Feasibility Study was published in January 2021, with the report finding that a multi-disciplinary neurodevelopmental approach, inclusive of ADHD, was needed.

Following on from the study, the Scottish Government has provided funding of £650,000 for adult neurodevelopmental pathway trials. The final report , including the findings and recommendations of the trials were published in March. We have accepted the recommendations and we are working with NAIT on implementation.

Attainment in literacy in Scotland’s schools remains strong. The 2021/22 Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence levels (ACEL) data demonstrates that approaches to COVID recovery in education are working.

Data on ACEL showed a record increase for 2021-22 in the proportion of primary school pupils achieving the expected levels of literacy. Comparing 2021/22 levels with 2020/21, primary literacy attainment was up 4 percentage points to 71%. In terms of the poverty related attainment gap, 2021-22 ACEL data also showed a record decrease in the gap between primary literacy levels, which are now more similar to pre-pandemic levels. 2022 exam results show a Higher English pass rate of 81.3% which represents an increase of 7.9 percentage points compared to 2019 when exams were last held. English is the most common subject at National 5 and Higher. In addition, the Policy Prospectus launched in April by the First Minister, includes a commitment to re-joining the Trends in International Mathematics and Science and Progress in International Reading Literacy studies. Participation in international surveys enables countries to share important information about their educational policies and practices and how these foster educational progress.

The Community Land Scotland Gaelic Development Officer post is the result of a partnership between Bòrd na Gidhlig and Community Land Scotland and independent from the Scottish Government. The project is being evaluated externally to the Bòrd and though originally expected to be completed in February there have been in delays experienced by researchers who had difficulty in reaching some consultees. The draft report will now be presented to Bòrd na Gidhlig’s Policy and Resources Committee at its meeting on 9 May 2023.

We understand that the Bòrd have offered to meet with you discuss the project.

As set out in the November 2022 update to the Additional Support for Learning Review Action Plan, the Scottish Government discussed with GTCS and SCDE the viability of a first teaching qualification in additional support for learning being available at the initial teacher education stage.

The conclusion of these discussions was that this type of qualification may not be considered attractive to those considering a career in teaching and that student teachers need to experience the full spectrum of school teaching during initial teacher education and probation before being in a position to make an informed judgement on specialising in additional support for learning.

The Scottish Government has committed to providing a full breakdown of the implementation of Medication Assistant Treatment (MAT) standards in June 2023.

The Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy will update Parliament on progress in June and this will coincide with the publication of the 2022-2023 implementation update which will be produced by Public Health Scotland. The data published will be broken down by each local authority implementation area, detailing the progress each area has made on all MAT standards since the 2021-22 Benchmarking Report on Implementation which was published in June 2022.

The Scottish Government and sport scotland believe that sport is for everyone. An ongoing priority for the Scottish Government is to support participation across all groups and tackle inequalities in participation. Sports are incredibly diverse, so Governing Bodies and Federations need to consider inclusion, fairness and safety to determine appropriate options for their sport.

Scottish Athletics are working with UK Athletics and the other home countries to develop a Transgender Eligibility Policy for athletics across the UK. At present, there are no transgender athletes competing at the elite/performance level within Scotland or as part of Scottish Athletics performance squads.

The World Athletics policy applies to any events that are registered as World Ranking Competitions, where the licence for the competition or event is granted by UK Athletics or a Home Country Athletics Federation. This includes the Scottish Athletics National Championships.

During the transitional phase across athletics in the UK, the World Athletics policy applies to all licensed events. In Scotland, the World Athletics Transgender Regulations and World Athletics Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification (Athletes With Differences of Sex Development) will not apply to local school events other than Home Country National School Championships and those events where athletes can qualify for Home Country National School Championships.

Trade Ministers from the Scottish, Welsh and UK Governments and the Northern Ireland Executive meet quarterly as the Inter Ministerial Group for Trade. The last meeting of this group took place on 9 January 2023, and was attended by the then Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise, Ivan McKee MSP; Minister for Economy in the Welsh Government, Vaughan Gething MS; and the then UK Minister for Trade, Greg Hands MP. The UK Government provided an update on the CPTPP negotiations. Subsequent developments towards accession to CPTPP have been covered in official engagement and Ministerial correspondence.

The National Planning Improvement Champion will support improvement within the Scottish planning system. Recruitment for this new post, which will be based within the Improvement Service, is underway. Applications were invited by 31 March 2023 and are currently being assessed. We hope to have a successful candidate in post very soon.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that every school aged child has access to a device by the end of this Parliament.

In 2020/21, we provided £25 million to local authorities across Scotland to tackle digital exclusion, resulting in over 72,000 devices and 14,000 internet connections being distributed to children and young people to support their learning.

Local authorities have also invested in devices from their own budgets. Information from them indicates that up to 280,000 devices have already been distributed to learners across Scotland (including the 72,000 funded by the Scottish Government).

In December 2022 the Scottish Government completed discovery work to establish the current picture of digital devices and infrastructure in schools. Using the findings from the discovery, we continue to work closely with local authorities and COSLA to deliver on the commitment.