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There are currently no plans to merge Scottish Funding Council and Skills Development Scotland. Plans to better align of the functions of the two agencies will be developed as part of phase 2 of the review.

Plans to establish an innovation and investment hub in Berlin are currently in development and details will be made available in due course.

The Scottish Government does not make student debt projections.

However, the Student Loans Company publishes data on total student debt and average student debt:

http://www.slc.co.uk/official-statistics/student-loans-debt-and-repayment/scotland.aspx

Table 1: Total amount owed by borrowers who received loans as Scottish domiciled students studying in the UK, or as EU domiciled students studying in Scotland

Source: Student Loans Company

Table 2: Average Loan Balance for borrowers who received loans as Scottish domiciled students studying in the UK, or as EU domiciled students studying in Scotland

Source: Student Loans Company

This is an operational matter for the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). I have asked the Chief Executive of SQA to write to you.

Scottish Government is in regular contact with SQA on a range of issues.

Payment of the Living Wage is a commitment the Scottish Government takes extremely seriously. The Scottish Government introduced the requirement to pay the Living Wage as an integral part of its public sector pay policy in 2011-12. We also expect all public bodies with Living Wage Accreditation to fully comply with the terms of that accreditation.

Ministers have sought assurances from SQA on these issues. The SQA has confirmed that it is a Living Wage Employer and that it applies the Living Wage to all appointees, including invigilators.

The status of appointees is an operational matter for SQA. I have asked the Chief Executive of SQA to write to you.

The timescales for delivering the Best Start Grant and the other social security benefits that are being devolved are yet to be finalised. Our consultation on the future of social security closed last week and we will use this and the information gathered from the many events we held, to help inform our decisions.

The Scottish Government now runs all consultations online through its consultation hub (http://consult.scotland.gov.uk). Each consultation is listed with its title, start and end dates. Consultations can be filtered by subject (interest) and policy team (department), however there is no facility to filter or view consultations by Minister or Ministerial portfolio.

If known, a consultation will indicate the date when findings will be published. Consultation responses and findings, where published, are attached to each consultation.

The Learner Journey review will build on the solid foundations of Getting It Right For Every Child, Curriculum for Excellence and Developing the Young Workforce to further improve young people’s experience of moving through school, college, training, university or employment.

The review process, underway through the commissioning of research into the experience of young people at various points in the system, will consider 5 themes: careers information, advice and guidance; access; provision; transitions and progression; and funding. The Scottish Government will undertake a process of evidence gathering and extensive engagement with learners and those who work with them to identify improvements. We will publish more detail about that process by the end of this year.

Good progress has been made. A new model of inspection was introduced in September 2016 following extensive consultation with stakeholders. The school inspection is based around the self-evaluation framework How Good is Our School? 4 (HGIOS?4) which sets out Quality Indicators (QI) together with associated key themes.

The QI ‘Raising attainment and achievement’ is one of four QIs being evaluated on all school inspections this academic year. In all inspections, this QI is graded on a six-point scale (excellent; very good; good; satisfactory; weak and unsatisfactory) and evaluates the extent of schools’ success in raising attainment and closing the attainment gap. The QI includes the illustration of an evaluation of Very Good: ‘we have raised the attainment of all our learners and in particular our most disadvantaged children and young people’ as an example of the ‘Equity for all learners’ theme. Discussions on this theme include a focus on how schools are using their SIMD data and what the school is doing to close the poverty-related attainment gap.

Education Scotland will continue to monitor and evaluate the reporting through HGIOS?4 on closing the attainment gap.

Schools’ own self-evaluation reports form an important part of the inspection evidence. Inspectors use these reports help them make judgements on how well schools are raising attainment and achievement, and how well schools’ self-evaluate their performance across a range of QIs.

On 9 June 2016, the Deputy First Minister announced that the Scottish Attainment Challenge would be extended to secondary schools, both in the seven Challenge Authority areas and the majority of secondaries associated with the primary schools in the existing Schools Programme. The announcement also indicated that two more authorities would be added to the Challenge Authorities Programme. Additional funding of £13.4 million for the two new Challenge Authorities and the additional secondary schools was confirmed in October 2016.

From financial year 2017-18 the additional £100 million per annum that will be raised each year from our Council Tax reforms will be allocated directly to schools. It is likely that the vast majority of publicly funded schools will receive funding.

Work on developing a range of national programmes is ongoing including national approaches to enhancing learning and teaching and leadership.