Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Deferral Working Group was established to guide and assist evaluation of the pilot approach and assist preparation and planning for full implementation of the associated legislation in August 2023.

Interviews were undertaken with 30 parents as part of the pilot evaluation and the findings from the evaluation were shared with the working group.

Results from a parent survey about deferrals conducted by Glasgow City Council was shared with the working group.

Give Them Time, a group who campaigned for the additional year of funded ELC for children who defer, attended the working group in July 2021 to share the views of parents they work with and these views were also fed in through officials at further meetings.

Ultimately, the costs of the strategy will be determined by the actions which are included when the strategy is finalised. These will require to be assessed and agreed within the context of the 2024-25 Published Budget process.

To support development of the strategy we have spent more than £70k on research and engagement since the announcement was made; and have provided grant funding to the Association for Real Change (ARC) Scotland.

The responsibility for the provision of secure transport lies with local authorities, and the development of this specification is being led by COSLA.

Discussions with key partners around the use of the specification are ongoing and will be discussed at the national Secure Care Group Meeting on 2 October. The Secure Transport Working Group aim to introduce the specification as soon as possible to assist local authorities in commissioning these services.

As a Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB), SQA operates at arm’s length to ministers and is responsible for its own operational decisions, including decisions relating to course assessments.

SQA’s decision to return to full course assessments for the National Qualifications in 2023-24 was made following engagement with the National Qualifications Group and wider education community, informed by extensive feedback gathered as part of their evaluation of the 2022 arrangements.

I discussed these matters directly with the Chief Examiner, including feedback from the SSTA and other teachers, and received assurance that the impact of the removal of modifications will be carefully considered in the grading process in 2024.

The Scottish Government will publish a statistical report on the results of the PISA 2022 assessments on 5 December 2023, which will include internationally comparable results on maths, science and reading. The publication is timed to coincide with the release of the international results by the OECD, which will include the results of all 81 participating countries and economies.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) has recently begun collecting students’ reasons for withdrawal (RfW) from colleges. SFC will be working with Colleges Scotland and College Development Network (CDN) to improve the capture of student withdrawal data in future years to enable publication.

The Scottish Government has committed to rejoining the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) with the next cycles, PIRLS 2026 and TIMSS 2027, reporting in 2027 and 2028 respectively.

Data on reading, mathematics and science performance will continue to be available in the interim period from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 results which are being published in December 2023 and PISA 2025 results, which will be published in 2026. In addition, literacy and numeracy attainment results from the Achievement of CfE Levels data collection are published each year in December for P1, P4, P7 and S3 pupils.

From 2007 to 2016, full-time equivalent was defined as between 35 and 37 hours per week depending on the local authority in which the staff were employed. From 2017 full-time equivalent has been calculated using a standard 35 hours per week across all local authorities.

The most recent data on sports participation is from the 2021 Scottish Health Survey, which shows that the average percentage of children aged between 11 and 15 that had taken part in a sport activity in the past week was 65%.

The Scottish Government does not track the participation of children aged between 10 and 15 in cultural activities.

The consultation is due to close on 19 October 2023. The responses will then be analysed to inform our next steps, which will be set out in due course.