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The number of FTE teachers for the 2025-26 school year will be confirmed following publication of the 2025 teacher census results.

Scottish Government do not hold an estimate of the number of full-time equivalent nurses there will be in 2025-26.

Student number targets are set after extensive engagement with key stakeholders to provide stability across partners including higher education institutes.

Nursing Students graduate after 3 years, some take 4 or even 5 years, and as with all educational courses there is some attrition which makes it difficult to forecast the exact numbers of graduates.

The recruitment of officers and staff is a matter for the Chief Constable, The Scottish Government does not hold the information requested.

The Chief Constable confirmed that our investment will enable Police Scotland to recruit enough officers to increase numbers back to the region of 16,500 to 16,600 officers in 2024-25. Throughout this financial year the Scottish Government budget has allowed for planned intakes of around 1300 recruits, which is more than at any time since 2013.

Police Scotland has commenced transformative work to develop a new operating model and three-year business plan. It is important the Chief Constable has the flexibility to develop her workforce in a way that responds to the challenges she faces and ensures Police Scotland can continue to tackle high threat, harm, and risk in all of Scotland’s communities.

The Scottish Government publish full-time police officer numbers on a quarterly basis. The statistics published provide a snapshot of police strength at the end of each quarter. Police officer quarterly strength statistics Scotland - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The following table shows the number of full-time equivalent police officers at the end of each quarter during 2023-24.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

As of 2 April 2024 (the date on which SPS’ year end people data was collated), SPS’ full time equivalent figure across prison officer positions was 3440.5.

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

The forecasting that has been undertaken to produce SPS’ workforce plan projects that SPS will employ 3623 full time equivalent prison officers on 1 April 2025. This projection relies on assumed variables, such as turnover rate.

To answer this question both sets of data refer to the full time equivalents (FTE) at March 24 as the end point of FY2023-24.

Data is provided from both the Scottish Government core workforce information and the devolved Scottish Civil Service employment information.

This information is published quarterly as part of the Scottish Government statistics on workforce information and the Public Sector Employment in Scotland Statistics.

The links are attached and FTE refers to March 24 published statistics.

Scottish Government workforce information - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Public sector employment in Scotland: web tables - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

In relation to 2023-24, at end March 2024, the Scottish Government core employed 8,843 FTE directly employed staff including permanent and fixed term staff.

In relation to 2023-24, at end March 2024, the Scottish Government devolved civil service employed 26,800 FTE.

The number of full time equivalent civil servants in 2025-26 across the core Scottish Government and the various Executive Agencies will be informed by the 2025-26 budget in December.

Workforce numbers will be considered in the context of the recently announced recruitment freeze and the Pre-Budget Fiscal Update to Parliament on 4 September.

The information requested on how many full-time equivalent nurses there were in 2023-24 can be found on the TURAS NHS Education for Scotland workforce statistics site at: NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence

Figures for the full time equivalent (FTE) number of operational staff in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service at year end 2023-24 can be found at the SFRS published Fire Safety and Organisational Statistics 2023/24. These are a snapshot of the organisation on 31 March 2024 Fire Safety and Organisational Statistics, 2023-2024, Statistics | Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (firescotland.gov.uk).

For ease of reference the figure of FTE operational staff at the end of 2023-24 is 3419.