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The Scottish Government continues to keep Preference Waiver Payments (PWP) under review through the Teacher Induction Scheme Ongoing Review Group, and the Strategic Board for Teacher Education will also consider this issue as part of its wider work on teacher recruitment and retention.

However, it is worth highlighting the original intent of the scheme, which is to incentivise teachers to undertake their probation in those parts of Scotland where recruitment and retention is the greatest challenge. We know that those pressures are generally felt more in secondary schools than they are in primary schools.

The “live” aspect of the National e-Learning Offer (NeLO), which includes interactive, online classes and study support from early years to senior phase, is evaluated via Annual Evidence of Impact Reports published by e-Sgoil. The latest report which covers academic year 2022/23 was published in June 2023, and is available at: https://www.e-sgoil.com/downloads/e-sgoil_Impact_Report_2023.pdf

Key highlights from that report included the following:

19,000 webinar registrations for evening study support

16,100 webinar registrations for Easter Study support

44,915 learner attendances at “Developing the Young Workforce Live” sessions

170 “interrupted learners” who are unable to attend school onboarded and engaging with live, interactive programmes of learning.

The “recorded lessons” offer from NeLO is hosted by West Online School (West OS) and their reports are available at: https://www.westpartnership.co.uk/evaluating-and-reporting/ . In 2022-23, 90% of schools and over 40,000 learners accessed WestOS recorded lessons, podcasts and masterclasses.

The “supported” offer is hosted by Education Scotland in the form of a repository of online resources with a single search tool and usage is captured as part of Education Scotland’s own reporting.

NeLO partners continue to gather learner and educator feedback through focus groups and questionnaires.

In line with the National Standard for providers of funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC), it is a requirement that “children have daily access to outdoor play and they regularly experience outdoor play in a natural environment as part of their funded ELC offer ” .

The Local Authority Digital Office is a collaboration of Scottish local authorities, and independent of the Scottish Government. They are currently assisting the Student Placement Management Group in the planning for a replacement student teacher placement system.

The Scottish Government has been working with the Improvement Service and Scottish Futures Trust since 2017 to support local authorities with the delivery of the 1140 expansion programme. Prior to the statutory entitlement of ELC provision increasing to 1140 hours in August 2021, support was focused on ensuring that local authorities had the necessary staffing and infrastructure in place to meet the increased entitlement. More information on this delivery support function can be found here: ELC Delivery Progress Reports | Improvement Service

Since August 2021, Scottish Government has refocused the support we provide to local authorities via the Improvement Service, to embed the intended benefits of the expansion and to strengthen, enable and assure the delivery of ELC services to all eligible children.

Improvement Service supports local authorities to identify and share good practice examples and to understand and implement service improvements. This includes supporting local authorities to understand processes involved in maximising two-year-old uptake, including how to make best use of the new data being shared with local authorities on the eligible population in their area.

Scottish Government does not collect information on work local authorities do within their local areas. Local authorities are able to share their experiences on the Knowledge Hub.

The Programme for Government 2023-24 set out major new commitments on childcare including how we will test, for the first time, what an all-age childcare system will look like for Scotland in six councils.

We will work closely with those communities, our partners, and providers to consider how the early learning and school age childcare workforce can support these systems, and what they will need to do so. This will include consideration of regulatory issues, qualifications and professional development, which will take time to do fully and is why we will now set out our plans in 2024.

In the meantime, we will continue to work with the Framework Steering Group and other partners to support delivery of the actions being developed as part of the original plan. We have, for example, already developed a range of new learning resources, implemented a Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) fee waiver and are starting work on a new national portal for professional learning.

Prior to establishing the framework for delivering counselling services, officials engaged with professional counselling bodies who advised that therapeutic counselling is not appropriate for younger pupils. In light of this advice, our commitment is specifically to make counselling available to secondary, primary and special school pupils aged 10 and over.

School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools may have in place to support the health and wellbeing of children and young people. We provide local authorities with £15 million per annum to fund community-based mental health and wellbeing supports for children, young people and their families.

We have also supported school staff to understand and recognise the range of mental health and wellbeing concerns that young people may experience in a new professional learning resource introduced in June 2021.

Whilst there is an expectation that Educational Psychologist trainees make every reasonable effort to secure employment within a Scottish educational psychology service, this does not preclude seeking other employment if it is not possible to secure local authority employment.

The Family Learning Scotland Programme (‘the Programme’) was successfully delivered by Peeple from March 2020 to December 2021 despite significant disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Programme was managed through a contract and Peeple provided reports throughout the contract period to provide assurance on progress and on the final outcomes.

The Programme offered training to early learning and childcare practitioners in an evidence-based family learning approach. A review of the evidence for the chosen approach can be found on the Peeple website here:

peep evidence base | www.peeple.org.uk

Training was offered to up to 432 practitioners in every local authority in Scotland and 383 practitioners undertook the training. Practitioners continue to offer family learning opportunities to children and families across Scotland and continue to be supported by Peeple. This support includes the Peep Champions Network, a termly meeting of representatives from each local authority in Scotland trained in the approach.

Through the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund, we have conducted a competitive grant process to build on the Family Learning Scotland Programme. ‘Families Learning Together’ will test widening out family learning training to all services that interact with children and families in a local area.

We will announce the partner for this new project shortly.

We recognise the financial challenges facing colleges and understand the need for greater flexibility in college sector funding. The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) implemented a series of flexibilities for colleges in both academic years 2022-23, and 2023-24.

The Scottish Government and SFC are working with the sector to explore whether there are further flexibilities that could assist the sector in the short to medium term, while ensuring robust public accountability is safeguarded.