Seòmar agus comataidhean

No.

Social Exclusion can take many forms and is often complex and multi-dimensional. The Social Justice Milestones are used throughout Scotland to measure a range of issues that can lead to social exclusion. The Scottish Executive is ensuring that the needs of rural areas are identified through urban/rural disaggregation of social statistics. For example, the Social Justice Annual Report's technical report disaggregated 12 of the social justice milestones on an urban and rural basis. A compendium of rural statistics - Social Focus on Urban Rural Scotland - was published on 22 May 2003.

Figures across the whole of the time period requested are not available on a consistent basis. This is because the method of funding FE colleges changed when responsibility for the methodology transferred to the Scottish Further Education Funding Council (SFEFC) from 2000-01.Because of the fundamental role that FE colleges have in encouraging people of all ages and from different backgrounds to participate in post-school learning, a large proportion of the resources made available to FE colleges by SFEFC are associated in some way with the promotion of social inclusion. The Scottish Executive expects SFEFC to exercise its the judgement and expertise in allocating the resources placed at its disposal, and does not instruct SFEFC on the proportion of funding which must be applied to social inclusion initiatives. The figures in the following table show, from 2000-01, the sums which SFEFC made available to further education colleges to cover the additional costs of social inclusion over and above the standard funding per student place.

Year	£
2000-01	5,208,896
2001-02	9,891,576
2002-03	10,986,126

Source: Scottish Further Education Funding Council.

No funding has been sought from the Scottish Executive for such a study. The opening or re-opening of railway stations is generally considered a local transport issue and as such we would expect the relevant local authority to take a project forward. It is a matter for Scottish Borders Council to determine whether the restoration of a station at Reston is one of its transport priorities and to identify appropriate funding for a feasibility study. Any proposal to re-open a station at Reston would also require the Scottish Borders Council to consult the Strategic Rail Authority.

This is a matter for local education authorities. Subject to the terms of sections 28A and 28B of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, it is for the local education authority to set out and make available guidelines indicating how they will place children in schools under their management.

Education authority committees are not concerned with the determination of "civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge" and therefore ECHR, and in particular Article 6, is not applicable. We consider that the system for dealing with cases considered by the committees, which includes the availability of a further appeal to the sheriff court, is nonetheless compatible with the requirements of the convention.

The Scottish Executive has no plans to make legal aid available in respect of local authority education appeal committee proceedings. Legal aid is available for appeals from the committees to the sheriff court.

Section 28 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 requires each education authority to publish or otherwise make available their arrangements for the placing of children in schools under their management.In addition, each year the Scottish Executive publishes a guide for parents entitled Choosing a School, which includes within it information on the placing request system. This booklet is available at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/education/casg-00.asp.

The Scottish Executive does not issue such policy guidelines. Education authorities are under a statutory duty (set out in section 1 of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980) to ensure that they make adequate and efficient provision of school education for their area. Setting criteria for the allocation of places in schools under their management and for determining priority admissions are matters to be determined by education authorities in meeting their duties under this section. Authorities can only turn down a placing request on one of the grounds set out in law.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S2W-176 today. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/search_wa.