Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to improving the experience of the social work workforce to ensure it is more sustainable in the longer term.

Whilst the social work workforce is primarily employed by local authorities who have a statutory duty to maintain an adequate workforce to meet the needs of their population and to fulfil their statutory duties in respect of social work, the Scottish Government has introduced measures to help address the challenges facing the profession.

This includes working jointly with COSLA and other key stakeholders to address the acute recruitment and retention challenges facing the profession; forming a joint Social Care & Social Work/Services Workforce Taskforce to explore opportunities to deliver improvements for the adult and children's social care and social work workforce; and creating a National Social Work Agency to provide a single national body with oversight of social work education, training and professional development, and the improvement of social work services.

All children and young people should receive the support that they need to reach their full potential. Local authorities are under a statutory duty to identify, provide for, and review the additional support needs of their pupils.

Spending on additional support for learning by local authorities has reached a record high of £926m in 2022-23. The Scottish Government has continued to invest £15m per year since 2019-20 to help authorities respond to the individual needs of pupils and provides over £11m of funding each year to directly support pupils with complex additional support needs and services to children and families.

It should be noted that between 2012-13 to 2022-23, the real terms average spend per pupil in both primary and secondary schools has increased from £6,170 and £8,349 respectively in 2012-13 to £7,075 and £8,766, respectively.

The number of pupils identified with additional support for learning needs has increased markedly since 2010 and there continue to be year on year increases. This is partly driven by a change to how ASN statistics were gathered in 2010.

It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on education, 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 Computing Science Hardware grant was offered to all Local Authorities to submit a bid to Scottish Government for schools in their Local Authority area and claims were received from a total of 304 schools, representing 85% of all secondary schools in Scotland. Since the scheme was operated at local authority level we are unable to comment on the reasons why individual schools chose not to take up the offer.

While the Scottish Government commissioned the Lessons Learned Report, the recommendations are for those involved in the National Bargaining arrangement to take forward. The Scottish Government has no powers to impose an implementation plan on stakeholders.

However, to encourage the taking forward of the findings of the report, I met with a range of stakeholders on 13 March to commence a dialogue around next steps for the Sector. I will continue to engage with this group as they, I hope, are able to work towards finding a better way forward than currently exists.

Operational decisions, including those such as dispute resolution, are a matters for individual colleges.

The Scottish Government has no role to play in these processes.

The most recent Instrumental Music Survey published by the Improvement Service in December 2023 holds this information. Page 9 provides figures on students receiving free instrumental music tuition and Page 18 provides the number of music tutors. For ease of reference, this has been set out in the following tables.

Number of instrumental music pupils

As with previous years, the Scottish Funding Council expects to publish this year’s indicative college funding allocations in early spring with final funding allocations expected in late Spring for the academic year 2024-25.

The Scottish Government can confirm that no secondary schools were unsuccessful in their applications for grants from the investment in computing science hardware. However, some schools opted not to take up the offer.

Scottish Government monitored the delivery and spend of the grants for computing science hardware for schools. An evaluation of this work as well as wider computing science policy is underway and further updates will be publicised in due course.

The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills wrote to Universities Scotland on 9 February to confirm that the Scottish Government will not be responding to any consultations on minimum service levels in education services, or providing assistance with the development of any regulations that may arise from such consultations.

The Scottish Government remains strongly opposed to the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 and any associated secondary legislation which affects devolved services. This legislation seeks to undermine legitimate trade union activity and does not respect the Scottish Government’s Fair Work principles. Instead we will continue to encourage university employers to work with trade unions to reach fair and reasonable settlements, respecting the legitimate interest of workers, not seeking to curb their right to strike.

Under the Act it is a matter for individual employers in affected sectors to decide whether to issue work notices to trade unions specifying the workforce required to meet minimum service levels for a particular strike period. The Scottish Government has no intention of directing any employers within their control to issue work notices.