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Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S1W-06570

Asked by: Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 May 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sarah Boyack on 23 May 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive what steps it will take to reduce the rate of pedestrian injuries among children living in disadvantaged areas.

The Scottish Executive and the UK Government recently announced targets for road accident casualty reductions in the period to 2010. These include a 50% reduction in the number of child fatal and serious casualties. The targets, together with a strategy for achieving them, were published on 1 March.

The Scottish Executive will take into account the findings of the research report Road Accidents and Children Living in Disadvantaged Areas, published by the Scottish Executive Central Research Unit on 19 April, when targeting road safety campaigns for disadvantaged areas.

Question reference: S1W-06571

Asked by: Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 May 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sarah Boyack on 23 May 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive what impact lack of access to safe crossing sites and safe play areas and location of schools outside the communities they serve has on the level of child pedestrians injured in road accidents.

Research published recently by the Scottish Executive found that child pedestrians from socio-economically disadvantaged families have a higher risk of injury in road accidents than children in higher socio-economic groups and that injuries tend to be of greater severity. The research suggested that the link between social deprivation and the high accident rate of child pedestrians may be partly explained by increased exposure to hazardous environments, such as busy roads with a lack of safe crossing sites, the location of schools within the community and the availability of and access to safe play areas. These factors, compounded by a lack of adult supervision of younger children, appear to exacerbate road accident rates in disadvantaged areas.

Research to be commissioned by the Scottish Executive later this year will consider road safety initiatives in deprived areas. In particular, the research will establish the extent and type of community road safety initiatives in Scotland, focusing on deprived areas. It will compare different types of initiatives and consider best practice. Guidelines to be produced in the light of the research will advise local authorities and community organisations on how to establish and run a road safety initiative.

Question reference: S1W-06573

Asked by: Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 May 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sarah Boyack on 23 May 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive what plans it has to raise awareness of road safety issues among parents in disadvantaged areas.

Question reference: S1W-04695

Asked by: Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 February 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sam Galbraith on 12 May 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will detail the total estimated expenditure on school building maintenance by each local authority in financial years 2000-01 and 2001-02.

Question reference: S1W-04694

Asked by: Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 February 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sam Galbraith on 12 May 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will provide an estimate of the total amount it would cost in current cash terms to effect all school building maintenance outstanding at the present time, indicating the amount for each local authority and, in the event that this information is not held centrally, whether it has any plans to conduct an audit to gather such information.

The overall management of their school building stock is a matter for individual education authorities. Detailed information of the kind requested is not held centrally. Education authorities generally have their own assessments of school building maintenance and other needs, although these may not be on a basis which is consistent across authorities. We are currently discussing with local authority representatives aspects of school building needs, including the scope for improving the consistency of such information across all authorities.

Question reference: S1W-04711

Asked by: Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Thursday, 24 February 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sam Galbraith on 12 May 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will provide indicative (a) building and (b) maintenance unit costs for (i) new primary schools, (ii) new secondary schools, (iii) primary school extensions and (iv) secondary school extensions.

Question reference: S1W-05365

Asked by: Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2000
Current Status: Answered by Peter Peacock on 12 May 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive, further to the answer to question S1W-4751 by Peter Peacock on 10 March 2000, to specify the range of subjects in which local authorities have reported difficulties in maintaining teacher supply cover.

Question reference: S1W-05363

Asked by: Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 15 March 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sam Galbraith on 29 March 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive whether it will (a) provide details on the progress of implementation of Higher Still and (b) invite the Scottish Qualifications Authority to publish, at the end of the current academic year, an assessment of the first year of Higher Still including an account of any problems identified or reported and the action proposed to deal with such problems.

Around 80% of Highers being taught this year are new Highers. Although teachers were given the option to introduce selected Higher courses from next year, around 5,000 courses at Intermediate and Access levels have been introduced voluntarily by schools. HMI observations indicate that teachers are generally implementing Higher Still effectively.

The inevitable difficulties of change are being dealt with by the Scottish Qualifications Authority and the Higher Still Development Unit, who have also taken steps to ensure that pupils will not be disadvantaged.

Henry McLeish and I have decided that the Scottish Executive will, as is the practice with all developments, review the first year of implementation of Higher Still and publish the results in the autumn.

Question reference: S1W-05127

Asked by: Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 08 March 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sam Galbraith on 22 March 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive how much money for modern language teaching in primary schools, by local authority area, was (a) allocated for each of the years 1997-98, 1998-99, 1999-2000, (b) spent for each of these years and (c) will be allocated for 2000-01.

Support for teaching costs in local authorities forms part of the unhypothecated local government settlement and is not identified centrally. Additional funding is available to train primary teachers to teach modern foreign languages. The tables below show the funding allocated to local authorities following their nomination of teachers to undertake this training. Final allocations for 2000-01 are not yet decided.

1997-98

Local Authority	Actual Paid
	£,000
Aberdeen City	175
Aberdeenshire	215
Angus	115
Argyll & Bute	95
Clackmannanshire	44
Dumfries and Galloway	114
Dundee City	101*
East Ayrshire	57
East Dunbartonshire	55
East Lothian	81
East Renfrewshire	75
Edinburgh, City of	150
Falkirk	86
Fife	242
Glasgow, City of	311
Highland	307
Inverclyde	47
Midlothian	70
Moray	102
North Ayrshire	77
North Lanarkshire	172
Orkney Islands	45
Perth and Kinross	181
Renfrewshire	62
Scottish Borders	109
Shetland Islands	81
South Ayrshire	74
South Lanarkshire	140
Stirling	80
West Dunbartonshire	58
West Lothian	70
Western Isles	83

1998-99

Local Authority	Actual Paid
	£,000
Aberdeen City	153
Aberdeenshire	247
Angus	104
Argyll & Bute	97
Clackmannanshire	26
Dumfries and Galloway	99
Dundee City	92
East Ayrshire	57
East Dunbartonshire	110
East Lothian	89
East Renfrewshire	99
Edinburgh, City of	151
Falkirk	82
Fife	219
Glasgow, City of	27
Highland	293
Inverclyde	35
Midlothian	72
Moray	108
North Ayrshire	68
North Lanarkshire	81
Orkney Islands	53
Perth and Kinross	208
Renfrewshire	65
Scottish Borders	101
Shetland Islands	106
South Ayrshire	61
South Lanarkshire	149
Stirling	70
West Dunbartonshire	29
West Lothian	76
Western Isles	29

1999-2000

Local Authority	Actual Paid
	£,000
Aberdeen City	98
Aberdeenshire	122
Angus	54
Argyll & Bute	51
Clackmannanshire	20
Dumfries and Galloway	0
Dundee City	88
East Ayrshire	34
East Dunbartonshire	49
East Lothian	37
East Renfrewshire	49
Edinburgh, City of	115
Falkirk	34
Fife	68
Glasgow, City of	98
Highland	147
Inverclyde	15
Midlothian	39
Moray	49
North Ayrshire	29
North Lanarkshire	88
Orkney Islands	66
Perth and Kinross	83
Renfrewshire	32
Scottish Borders	44
Shetland Islands	29
South Ayrshire	19
South Lanarkshire	110
Stirling	29
West Dunbartonshire	10
West Lothian	34
Western Isles	18

Question reference: S1W-03981

Asked by: Nicola Sturgeon, MSP for Glasgow, Scottish National Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 26 January 2000
Current Status: Answered by Sam Galbraith on 23 February 2000

To ask the Scottish Executive what discussions it has had with Her Majesty's Government regarding the extension of the Disability Discrimination Act to education, as recommended by the Disability Rights Taskforce.