Seòmar agus comataidhean

Local authorities are independent corporate bodies with their own powers and responsibilities and are entirely separate from the Scottish Government. Ultimately, it is for locally elected representatives to make local decisions on how best to deliver services to their local communities. It is also the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on Community Facilities, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

The Scottish Government has increased local government funding by over £1 billion in 2022-23, a real terms increase of 6.3 per cent, despite a 5.2 per cent real terms reduction in the overall Scottish Budget.

In 2022-23, City of Edinburgh Council will receive £915.4 million to fund local services, which equates to an extra £86.7 million to support vital day-to-day services or an additional 10.5 per cent compared to 2021-22.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of children and young people home educating.

The current home education guidance recommends that local authorities should ordinarily make contact on an annual basis with families known to be home educating in their area and the current Scottish Government consultation on this guidance seeks views on how a local authority may reasonably inform themselves in order to fulfil their responsibilities under the Education (Scotland) Act 1980.

Our Equally Safe Strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls emphasises the importance of challenging the underpinning attitudes which enable such violence to take place. Education settings have an important role in challenging these attitudes through teaching children and young adults about healthy relationships, consent and gender stereotypes which drive gender-based violence.

Our Equally Safe at School (ESAS) project, developed by Rape Crisis Scotland and Zero Tolerance, applies a whole school approach to inequality and gender-based violence in schools. Since August 2021, Rape Crisis Scotland have reported over 60 schools have registered to ESAS. This year, Rape Crisis Scotland’s ESAS coordinator has been continuing to focus on the promotion of ESAS and working both nationally and with local authorities to build ESAS implementation strategies.

The Scottish Government also funds and supports other education-based programmes aimed at preventing gender-based violence. Our Mentors in the Violence peer education programme delivered in schools throughout Scotland seeks to enable young people to recognise and speak up against gender-based violence, bullying, abusive and violent behaviour, as well as the negative societal attitudes and assumptions which underpin this behaviour.

We have also established the Gender Equality Taskforce in Education and Learning, to identify ways in which systematic gender inequality in education and learning can be eradicated. In addition, the Gender-Based Violence in Schools Working Group is developing a national framework to ensure consistent messaging on gender-based harassment for everyone working with young people.

Furthermore, we are funding Rape Crisis Scotland to help deliver programmes which aim to tackle sexual harassment and violence in our schools including their national sexual violence programme which is aimed at local secondary schools across Scotland.

The current Scottish Stroke Care Standards are available at the following link:

https://www.strokeaudit.scot.nhs.uk/Quality/Scottish_Stroke_Care_Standards.html

The provision of stroke care, including rehabilitation, is also assessed against the Scottish Stroke Improvement Plan priorities:

( https://www.gov.scot/publications/stroke-improvement-plan/ ).

The Scottish Government does not require local authorities to record the grounds on which a tenant is evicted when they present as homeless.

Section 11 of the Homelessness etc. (Scotland) Act 2003 requires a landlord to notify the local authority when proceedings for possession are raised but there is no requirement for the local authority to record the grounds when it receives notice.

The Scottish Government’s code of guidance on homelessness recommends that on receiving notification, the local authority should take the most proactive approach possible to prevent homelessness occurring.

Local authorities can collect information on grounds for eviction when a household presents as homeless, especially if they can undertake activity which can prevent homelessness. Local authorities can also amend the section 11 notice to collect this information for their own purposes, in particular for the prevention of homelessness.

The Scottish Government launched a public consultation on the draft physical intervention in schools guidance on 21 June. The draft human rights-based guidance makes clear that restraint and seclusion should only ever be used as a last resort and when in the best interests of the child or young person.

The draft guidance is a result of our 2019 agreement with the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland and the Equality and Human Rights Commission in 2019 that non-statutory guidance be developed as a first step to improve practice in this area.

The draft guidance has been developed carefully, over time, with extensive input from over thirty working group members and partners, including the Children’s Commissioner, young people, parents, staff, local government and third sector organisations.

The consultation period has been extended to 25 October to allow all those with an interest in this sensitive area, including children and young people, to feedback their views. We will work closely with partners, following final publication, to ensure the guidance is followed.

Details of the membership and notes of the meetings of the physical intervention working group are available on the Scottish Government’s website: Physical Intervention Working Group - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

In healthcare settings, all incidents of restraint should be recorded and monitored at NHS Board level in line with their individual clinical governance procedures. The Mental Welfare Commission also have a role in publishing guidance in this area and in addressing individual cases following contact from patients, or as a result of their visits and themed reviews.

The Care Inspectorate gathers information on all incidents of restraint and reviews selected cases to ensure staff carrying out the restraint are fully trained and best practice is followed. They also inspect residential and secure care homes at least once each year, and restraint procedures are part of that inspection process.

In education settings, any use of physical intervention in schools, including restraint, must be recorded and monitored by local authorities. As part of their scrutiny and improvement roles in schools, Education Scotland inspectors consider the impact of practice in relation to the use of physical intervention, including restraint, for children and young people.

Information on the number of incidents of restraint and seclusion in these services are not collected at a national level by the Scottish Government.

As I confirmed in the chamber last week, the second strategic transport projects review recommendations include continued investment in ferry replacements and port upgrades to improve their resilience and reliability.

This is backed by our commitment in the Infrastructure Investment Plan to invest £580m over 5 years, including in the two new vessels for Islay and in the MV Loch Frisa.

There is no evidence to support the claim that primary school pupils in Scotland are falling behind pupils in England and due to the differing education systems and curriculums, direct comparisons cannot be made. The reports referred to by Monica Lennon relate to views expressed in relation to the closed Scottish Parliament petition PE01668. This petition related to phonics teaching in Primary schools in Scotland.

The UK government has sought to embed the teaching of phonics in all English primary schools and on 28 April 2022 published updated essential core criteria for systematic synthetic phonics (SSP) programmes to be used in schools. In Scotland, as with all of Curriculum for Excellence, schools, supported by their local authority, plan the reading curriculum to meet the needs of the learners within their own local context. In Wales and Northern Ireland schools are also provided with the flexibility to make informed decisions about the needs of their learners.

On 14 December 2021, I announced that a group would be set up as a National Response to Improving Literacy, which mirrored the already-existing National Response to Improving Mathematics. The group’s remit is currently being drafted but will look to examine the existing landscape in Scotland and to seek opportunities to enhance the professional learning for teachers and the classroom experiences for young people. It is anticipated that the first meeting of the group will be early in the next academic year.

The group is a partnership board led by Scottish Government, ADES and Education Scotland. Early gathering of stakeholder views indicates that teacher confidence in their knowledge and expertise and in selecting the best pedagogies to teach literacy could be a key theme explored by the group when formulating their recommendations.

The Scottish Government response to the Public Interest Journalism Working Group report, Scotland’s News: Towards A Sustainable Future for Public Interest Journalism , is scheduled to be published on the Scottish Government publications page on Friday 24 June.

The response will set out the Scottish Government’s answer to each of the recommendations, and the next steps for taking them forward.

The Scottish Government is very grateful to the Working Group’s members for their hard work in developing the recommendations within the report.