Chamber and committees

The Executive encourages the fullest possible use of all local authority resources, including school sporting facilities. It is though for authorities and schools to consider how best to encourage such community use. In Building our Future: Scotland’s School Estate, published jointly in 2003 by the Executive and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, there was clear commitment to providing better services to local communities through the modernisation of the school estate.

It is for the local authority, as procuring authority in a schools PPP project, to set out its requirements regarding all aspects of community use of school facilities. The details are for agreement between the authority and the PPP service provider. The Scottish Schools Standard PPP Contract highlights the need to ensure that these matters are considered and agreed.

The Scottish Executive does not collect information on the sale of such local authority fields.

The Scottish Executive does not collect information on the sale of such local authority fields.

The Scottish Executive does not set maintenance requirements for school playing fields. Management and maintenance of the school estate, including school playing fields, are matters for local authorities.

The Director of the National Playing Fields Association met with an official from the Executive’s Sports Division together with officials from sportscotland in February 2005. They discussed a range of issues relating to playing fields. The meeting concluded with an undertaking to work more closely together in areas of mutual interest. Following this meeting a number of Executive officials attended the National Playing Fields Association Scotland conference held in New Lanark on Friday 11 March 2005.

The Executive is committed to increasing levels of physical activity amongst our school children in line with the targets set out in our Physical Activity Strategy and Sport 21: The National Strategy for Sport in Scotland. We aim to achieve this through a twin approach of providing every school child with at least two hours of quality physical education classes every week and our significant investment in the active schools initiative which will increase the range and quantity of opportunities for our young people to be more active in and around the school day.

The main development goal for Learning and Teaching Scotland is to continue driving up the quality of learning experiences through various, diverse programmes and approaches.

The appointment of the development officer is a matter for Learning and Teaching Scotland. They have conducted the application process and are currently in negotiations to secure the services of the preferred candidate.

In order to achieve the goals of the programme, the Development Officer’s remit will include:

undertaking an audit of current provision;

developing case studies and good practice guidance aimed at providing opportunities for young people in personal and social development and learning to work with others in teams;

highlighting ways in which outdoor education can link with other relevant areas such as citizenship, and sustainability and environmental issues, and

thinking about ways in which outdoor education can provide a setting for delivering parts of the curriculum across a range of subjects;

with a view to raising the profile and opportunities for outdoor education.

I refer the member to the answer to question S2W-16657 on 2 June 2005. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament/webapp/wa.search.

Since writing to all successful applicants notifying them of their allocation and the conditions under which the Stage One offer was made, sportscotland have been holding regular meetings with all successful applicants to review progress, provide additional information and address issues to assist with the development of their projects as part of the Stage Two assessment process. Stage Two applications will be submitted over an 18 month period from May 2005, depending on the scale of each project and how far the proposals were developed at Stage One. Work on the first site is expected to commence in January 2006.