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The Scottish Government commissioned independent research, published on 7 May 2024, which outlined how the delivery of a 90 minute reduction in class contact time could be achieved through a range of scenarios, at that time.

The research can be accessed at: Pupil projections and implications for teacher resourcing needs: education workforce modelling and research.

This report has informed our engagement with partners on the commitment to reduce class contact time for teachers.

We remain committed to working with local government and teacher unions through the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers (SNCT) to make meaningful progress on reducing teacher class contact time.

Through the ‘New National Deal for Scotland’s teachers’, we have announced a set of proposed changes to the teaching and learning week which we plan to pilot and explore with local government and schools.

We intend to undertake pilot approaches to further develop the most innovative and evidence led solutions to restructuring the teaching and learning week.

The data and evidence we will gather through the pilots, which we wish to begin swiftly, will allow us to model the impact of specific changes, to the teaching and learning week, on a national basis, and demonstrate the efficacy of individual measures and approaches.

The Scottish Government is supporting safety and violence prevention in schools by directly investing £4.3 billion in Scotland’s education system in the 2025-26 budget. This investment includes £186.5m to local authorities in 2025-26 to help protect teacher numbers and maximise the number of teaching posts available. It also includes £29 million to support the recruitment, retention and training of the Additional Support for Learning workforce, backed by an additional £29 million in 2025-26 in local and national programmes; and £16m a year to ensuring access to counselling services for all children and young people aged 10 and over.

In addition, we have invested more than £6 million since 2023 to support implementation of the Violence Prevention Framework, which supports the work of schools in relation to violence prevention. Through this framework we are working with partners such as YouthLink Scotland, Medics Against Violence, and Police Scotland to provide targeted education programmes for our young people on the risks of and impacts of violence.

In 2025-26 we are also providing £298,480 to respectme, Scotland’s national anti-bullying service, to provide advice and resources to schools, parents and carers to support and educate young people on the impact of bullying and build confidence and capacity to address bullying.

Local authorities are responsible for managing their statutory duties in relation to school safety and child protection.

The vast majority of funding allocated to councils is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on school safety and child protection services, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The 2025-26 budget delivered record funding of over £15.1 billion for Local Government, a real terms increase of 5.5 per cent.

Since September 2025, there have been five meetings between Scottish and UK ministers in which the UK Budget was covered. In these meeting, Scottish Ministers have raised the implications of the UK Budget for the Scottish Budget.

Scottish Ministers do not routinely cancel meetings with their UK Ministerial counterparts. Scheduling of meetings is subject to normal diary considerations.

Changes to Local Connection in 2022 did not impact the ability of a Scottish Local Authority to refer a homeless household back to a local authority in England or in Wales in which they have a local connection (residence, employment, family or special circumstances). The 2022 changes related only to referrals between Scottish Local Authorities. Statistical analysis and extensive stakeholder engagement informed the decision to suspend referrals between Scottish local authorities for homeless households based on their local connection status. In the three years since, the number of homeless households presenting as homeless to a local authority in Scotland where they have no local connection remains low. The most recent publication (16 September 2025) shows that rates of households that were eligible for referral before November 2022 is 4%, which is consistent with previous years’ rates (the average of which is 3%) and similar to pre-legislative figures.

The comment about difficulties in establishing communication referred directly to inter-ministerial discussion on the contents of the UK Budget. The meeting between the UK Minister for Energy Consumers and I was reconvened and I was pleased to meet with Minister McCluskey on 3 December to discuss the Warm Home Discount and the UK Government’s proposed Warm Homes Plan.

The meeting referred to was reconvened and I was pleased to meet with Minister McCluskey on 3 December to discuss the Warm Home Discount and the UK Government’s proposed Warm Homes Plan.

The Scottish Government continues to consider clean heat deployment, and costs thereof, as part of the development of our updated Heat in Buildings Strategy and Delivery Plan to be published by the end of 2026.