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There are a range of commercial digital products available to schools aimed at improving children's reading.

Some schools in Scotland are already using these approaches to improve children's reading and Education Scotland, the Scottish education agency, will continue to explore the evidence base and relative effectiveness of these and how to best share good practice in this area.

Literacy, which includes reading, remains the responsibility of all educators and a key priority in the National Improvement Framework. The National Improvement Framework and improvement plan 2024 included a range of actions to support literacy under the National Response to Improving Literacy, all of which are relevant to reading. The 2025 National Improvement Framework, which will be published in December 2024, will include a new long-term strategy setting out how we will work in partnership with local authorities and wider children's services to improve outcomes for young people. Improving achievement in literacy will remain a key priority.

Of particular note, in February 2024 Education Scotland published an Early Reading Professional Support Overview followed by a number of Professional Learning Resources from March to June 2024 for educators who support children and young people to learn to read. This guidance covers a range of themes including developing skills for reading and it seeks to provide clarity on the position of systematic phonics within an overall approach to early reading. The guidance is accompanied by an enhanced national primary schools professional learning programme on early reading.

In addition, the Scottish Government continues to fund the Scottish Book Trust to deliver both the Reading Schools programme and Read Write Count with the First Minister (RWC). Reading Schools offers three accreditation levels to Primary, Secondary and Additional Support Needs schools, designed to champion schools’ efforts to build and sustain a reading culture, while RWC gifts books and other materials to Primary 2 and 3 pupils across Scotland. The Scottish Government also continues to fund the School Library Improvement Fund to support creative and innovative projects within the school library sector.

The National Response to Improving Literacy Partnership Board (NRIL) brings together Scottish Government, Education Scotland and the Association of Directors of Education Services (ADES) to identify and support actions to improve literacy. A key priority for the “NRIL” in 2024 and 2025 is the Literacy and English Curriculum Improvement Cycle which will seek to strengthen and update Scotland’s Literacy and English Curriculum.

The Digitisation of records is an operational responsibility of individual Health Boards and GP practices. At a national level and building on the existing use of electronic patient record systems, we are focussed on allowing medical records, including cancer, to be stored, linked, and shared securely. This will support our ambition set out in the 2021 Digital Health & Care Strategy 2021 Strategy - Digital Healthcare Scotland % (digihealthcare.scot) to make the right information available to all appropriate staff, when and where it is needed.

While the Scottish Government provides the overarching guidance/framework for patient travel expenses reimbursement, NHS Boards are responsible for developing local policy to best meet the needs to their populations, and for assessing eligibly for financial support and level of that support.

The cost of reimbursement is met from Boards’ budgets and all Boards must balance value for money with patient need, ensuring that patients are supported in identifying and accessing available support and that patient care is at the centre of all decisions.

It is recognised that transport to health is a key enabler to ensure equitable access to healthcare, and work to bring travel/transport and health planning closer together is in progress. This work will include bringing local bodies together at a regional level to consider the options for transport to health. This work will also inform how and when a review of the overarching patient travel expenses reimbursement guidance is taken forward.

The Scottish Government spent approximately £4.2 million on the preparation to roll out Pension Age Winter Heating Payment between May 2023 and August 2024. This primarily relates to the development of systems to deliver the benefit but also covers costs associated with the public consultation, analysis of responses and relevant publications.

Given the short notice of the change in policy following the UK Government’s decision, DWP will deliver Pension Age Winter Heating Payment this winter ahead of Social Security Scotland delivering in 2025-26.

The systems to deliver Pension Age Winter Heating Payment have been designed and developed in line with the Digital Scotland Service Standards, reusing existing technology where possible, to ensure value for money. The service design and the digital systems developed for launch in Winter 2024-25 will be reused when Social Security Scotland delivers the payment next winter (2025-26), although some changes will be required to reflect the new eligibility rules.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of early diagnosis of cancer and would expect any child or young adult presenting with potential cancer symptoms to be assessed as quickly as possible.

To support earlier diagnosis, a clinical refresh of the Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer is currently underway to help ensure the right person is on the right pathway at the right time and will be published in 2025.

This will include updated guidelines for suspected cancer in children and young people. These guidelines, developed with input from clinicians in primary and secondary care and third sector, will support primary care clinicians to identify those children and young people with symptoms suspicious of cancer who require urgent assessment by a specialist.

A new primary care cancer education platform – Gateway C – was launched on 30 April 2024 across NHS Scotland. Gateway C provides innovative and tailored information to support earlier cancer diagnosis efforts and enable effective decision-making. This free online platform is accessible to all primary care clinicians and includes specific education on cancers affecting children and young people.

Guidance on establishing the responsible commissioner has been issued to NHS Boards to ensure services are always provided in the best interests of the patient (CEL 06 (2013)).

As set out in this guidance and under article 2 of the Functions of Health Boards (Scotland) Order 1991, Health Boards have a responsibility to provide for the health care of patients living within their boundaries, i.e. patients who are “ordinarily resident” in their area. This includes when a Health Board refers a patient for whom they are responsible directly to another Health Board within Scotland or cross-border within the UK.

Two exceptions are designated national specialist services in both NHS Scotland and NHS England; and the commissioning of highly specialised services in NHS England. In such cases and through referral from the patient’s home Board, NHS National Services Scotland National Services Division (NSD) manages cross-border care through a financial risk share arrangement on behalf of all NHS Boards or, through an overarching Service Level Agreement in place with NHS England which allows Scottish patients to access highly specialist care.

In situations where the responsible commissioner is unclear, all facets of the NHS are expected to work together to reach agreement on a case by case basis.

In regards to reimbursement for travel specifically, a patient’s home Board is responsible for developing and applying local policy. This includes assessment of eligibility and the discretion to reimburse travel expenses where they are viewed to be an extension of treatment costs and are clinically necessary.

Teachers in Scotland are directly employed by local authorities, who will have their own local payroll arrangements; therefore provisions relating to the backdated payment of pay awards will differ between authorities. The Scottish Government does not hold data on the number of teachers in Scotland who have received backdated payments, because this data is held locally by Councils as the employer of teachers.

On 2 October 2024 the Scottish Negotiating Committee for Teachers (SNCT) issued a joint circular to local authorities regarding the agreed 4.27% pay increase for teachers, at all points in the SNCT pay scales, to be backdated to 1 August 2024.

The duration of access to psychological support for children and young people with cancer is led by clinical need.

In December 2022 Scottish Government committed to making recurring funding available to the existing specialist psychological support services for young people with cancer across Scotland. This commitment was successfully met in 2023-24 and continues to provide more certainty to these specialist roles.

The psychological support considerations regarding specialist workforce for children and young people with cancer is currently being reviewed by the Managed Service Network for Children and Young People with Cancer (MSN CYPC) as part of a wider workforce review. The Scottish Government is in regular contact with the MSN as their review continues.

Data provided by the NHS Research Scotland Cancer Research Network on the number of blood cancer clinical studies that have been supported by the Network in each financial year since 2018-19 are shown in the following table, noting that individual studies can take a number of years to complete. The figures are inclusive of studies open to recruitment and in participant follow up in any given year, paediatric and adult studies, and public, charity, and industry sector funded studies.