- Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 September 2009
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Current Status:
Answered by Keith Brown on 2 October 2009
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to recommendation 3 of the Teacher Employment Working Group, whether it has established whether the changing economic climate is altering the retirement intentions of teachers.
Answer
Information on teachers'' retirement intentions was sought from local authorities in December 2008. The issue also formed part of the discussions ministers had with local authorities as part of their spring and summer tours. We are awaiting the results of the 2009 teacher census which are due in November to help establish whether there have been changes in retirement patterns over a number of years and whether this corroborates the evidence already gathered.
- Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 September 2009
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Current Status:
Answered by Keith Brown on 2 October 2009
To ask the Scottish Executive, further to recommendation 6 of the Teacher Employment Working Group, whether it has reviewed the means by which local authorities may be able to release teachers for early retirement.
Answer
We are reviewing the means by which local authorities may be able to release teachers approaching retirement age and this involves work with the Scottish Public Pensions Agency which is ongoing.
- Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 September 2009
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Current Status:
Answered by Keith Brown on 2 October 2009
To ask the Scottish Executive what progress it has made in implementing the recommendations of the Teacher Employment Working Group that reported in October 2008.
Answer
Good progress is being made. Of the 12 recommendations of the Teacher Employment Working Group, recommendations 7, 8, 10 and 11 have been implemented and the other eight are being actively progressed with relevant stakeholders.
- Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 September 2009
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 1 October 2009
To ask the Scottish Executive what is being done to understand what is behind the slight but steady increase in the rate of stillbirths in babies who are near the point of delivery.
Answer
The rates of singleton stillbirths at term have fallen overall in the past 20 years, from 2.4/1,000 births in the mid 1980s to 2.0/1,000 births in recent years. Work to improve and modernize the classification of stillbirths is underway and may lead to a better understanding of the reasons behind these fluctuations.
- Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 September 2009
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 1 October 2009
To ask the Scottish Executive what is being done to ensure that parents do not experience the death of a healthy baby in the days immediately following birth.
Answer
Neonatal deaths have steadily fallen in the past 30 years, largely due to improving neonatal care and despite the same factors associated with stillbirths being prevalent, as well as a gradual rise in preterm deliveries and multiple births, both of which are associated with neonatal mortality. The death of a genuinely healthy baby is very rare and most deaths are associated with prematurity or congenital anomaly.
- Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 September 2009
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 1 October 2009
To ask the Scottish Executive what efforts are being made to prevent more than 300 families every year experiencing the death of a baby.
Answer
Improved teaching of emergency obstetric care for doctors and midwives now takes place throughout Scotland. Work to improve and modernize the classification of stillbirths is underway, and may help to give a better picture of the underlying causes of stillbirth.
- Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 September 2009
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 1 October 2009
To ask the Scottish Executive what work has been carried out to understand why rates of stillbirth in Scotland have remained unchanged for the last 20 years.
Answer
The recently published
Scottish Perinatal and Infant Mortality and Morbidity Report (SPIMMR),
http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/3109.html, shows that the reproductive population has changed in the past 30 years. Average maternal age is rising, as are rates of multiple pregnancies. These factors are important associations with stillbirth. NHS Quality Improvement Scotland, in conjunction with Information Services Division, is developing further work from the SPIMMR report.
- Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 September 2009
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 1 October 2009
To ask the Scottish Executive what research it has commissioned to understand why stillbirth rates in Scotland are among the highest in Europe.
Answer
Countries across Europe apply several different sets of criteria for the registration of stillbirths which makes reliable comparisons difficult. NHS Quality Improvement Scotland, in conjunction with Information Services Division, is developing further work from the recently published 30-year
Scottish Perinatal and Infant Mortality and Morbidity Report:
http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/3109.html .
The Chief Scientist Office (CSO) within the Scottish Government Health Directorates has responsibility for encouraging and supporting research into health and health care needs in Scotland. CSO responds primarily to requests for funding research proposals initiated by the research community in Scotland. CSO is not currently funding any research on stillbirths but would welcome research proposals, subject to the usual peer and committee review.
- Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Wednesday, 23 September 2009
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Current Status:
Answered by Shona Robison on 1 October 2009
To ask the Scottish Executive what work has been carried out to understand why Scotland’s intrapartum stillbirth rates have remained unchanged for the last 20 years.
Answer
Numbers of intra-partum stillbirths are extremely small and tend to fluctuate. The overall trend in the last 20 years has been slightly downwards and a recent analysis of Scottish data published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has confirmed this. An apparent small rise in recent years may be related to classification inconsistencies and work is in hand to increase the accuracy of diagnostic classification.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/302/6/660.
- Asked by: Ken Macintosh, MSP for Eastwood, Scottish Labour
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Date lodged: Tuesday, 15 September 2009
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Current Status:
Answered by Keith Brown on 29 September 2009
To ask the Scottish Executive what action it is taking at a national level to address the growing mismatch between the number of newly qualified teachers and the number of teaching posts.
Answer
We are taking forward the recommendations of the Teacher Employment Working Group. When the results of the 2008 teacher census became available the Scottish Government immediately recommended to the Scottish Funding Council that intakes for initial teacher education post graduate courses in 2009 be reduced by 500 places. Further reductions to training places will be made in 2010-11.
