Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Government is committed to listening to the voices of children and young people across the education landscape. Learner engagement and participation are vital elements within Scotland’s curriculum, and these are further enhanced with the incorporation of the UNCRC into Scots Law.

Education Scotland has recently updated the Successful Young Leaders of Learning programme, which supports learners from P4 upwards to engage in school improvement activity, working in collaboration with other schools. Schools also have access to the ‘Learner Participation in Education Settings’ and the ‘How Good is OUR school?’ online resources, which support the engagement of learners in school improvement and decision making within the classroom, school and community. Education Scotland also provides professional learning to take schools through the materials, providing an opportunity for further dialogue and support.

Scottish Government's Plan for School Research 2023-2026 sets out how each objective will be pursued, specifically:

• delivering robust and timely evidence to support the policy making process – through publishing a suite of research reports and official statistics, aligned to the Government’s research needs.
• collaboration with key partners – via the National Advisory Group and Academic Reference Group.
• supporting independent education research – through improved routes for knowledge exchange (such as the Education Research Seminar Series) and expanding membership of the Academic Reference Group to include early career researchers.
• continuing to improve data access – by continuing to make datasets available on Administrative Data Research Scotland platform and promoting available datasets and how to access them to the wider education research community.

The publication cost £479.75 to produce. Two Civil Servants were allocated to its production.

In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, Scottish Funding Council (SFC) publications including those reporting on college withdrawals, undergo systematic and periodic reviews on the strengths and limitations of the data.

As an example of the continuing work in this area, the SFC has initiated collection of students’ reasons for withdrawal from colleges. Experimental data has previously been collected, and SFC will be working with Colleges Scotland and College Development Network to improve the capture of student withdrawal data for publication in future years.

The SFC is also progressing an internal review of the definitions of college student outcomes metrics, to ensure that they provide the most appropriate measures of success for students.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collect information for all UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and will have taken the decision as the information collected could not adequately reflect the interlinked, complex reasons for students ending their studies.

As part of the new HESA Data Futures Collection, the Reason for Engagement Ending has been adapted to focus on whether a student has achieved any qualifications or credits when they withdraw. This will provide more robust and meaningful data.

Further information on the new variable is available from the HESA website here:

codingmanual.hesa.ac.uk/22056/Leaver/field/RSNENGEND

Good progress continues to be made with this project. The Enhancements Delivery Plan is a Network Rail document and Network Rail will publish its update in due course in the normal manner.

The Scottish Government has accepted the recommendation of the Joint Vaccination of Immunisations and Vaccinations (JCVI) that the age cohorts for the Shingles vaccination programme be expanded to protect individuals at an earlier age.

The vaccine will be offered free of charge to those aged 65 and 70 as defined by the patient’s age at 1 September 2023. NHS Health Boards are responsible for delivering vaccination programmes in Scotland and will invite eligible individuals forward for their appointments ahead of the programme commencing.

The changes to the programme have been outlined in the Chief Medical Officer Letter published on 31 July 2023 and can be accessed here: sehd.scot.nhs.uk/cmo/CMO(2023)11.pdf

The Scottish Government does not hold this information as the recruitment and employment of teachers including recruitment practices are matters for individual councils.

The Scottish Government has provided £145.5 million in this year’s budget to ensure local authorities:

• Maintain teacher numbers at 2022 census levels, as published in the Summary School Statistics in December 2022.
• Maintain pupil support staff numbers at 2022 census levels, as published on 21 March 2023 based on the data collected from local authorities in September 2022.

£100 million of this funding is distributed to local authorities as part of the 2023-24 General Revenue Grant. The remaining £45.5 million will also be distributed to local authorities following confirmation that these conditions have been met. The allocation of this funding, by local authority, is as follows.

Details on local authority funding allocations and the number of additional staff recruited are available on the Scottish Government website at the following link: Teachers - Schools - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)