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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.

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.

This information is not held centrally.

This information is not held centrally.

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

Local authorities have the statutory responsibility for delivering education. Therefore the Scottish Government does not collect data on teacher absences or the reasons for them.

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/

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.

The Scottish Government is committed to increasing teacher numbers to deliver improved outcomes for children and young people.

The number of teachers in permanent posts has remained stable at more than 80% over the past 10 years. In addition, the number of teachers in Scotland's classrooms has increased by more than 2,500 over the past decade, as a result of investment by the Scottish Government. While we cannot direct teachers where to work, it is important to note that teacher vacancies arise across Scotland throughout the year.

We recently agreed with local government a commitment to working together to restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels in 2025-2026, freeze learning hours and make meaningful progress towards reducing class contact time for teachers.

In order to support each of these measures, the Scottish Government is increasing the funding available to local government to £186.5 million in 2025-2026, and will issue £145.5 million to local government in full this financial year.

Local government will also receive additional funding of £28 million from 2025-2026 to develop the Additional Support for Learning (ASL) education workforce with further funding of £1 million being made available to support national initiatives which will help to recruit and train more ASL teachers.

Our priority at present is to work to change the basis of pitch fee uprating from the Retail Prices Index to the Consumer Prices Index under the Mobile Homes Act 1983. Once this is complete, we will work towards undertaking a post implementation review of the Residential Mobile Homes Site Licensing scheme.