Chamber and committees

The Scottish Executive has responsibility for the National Museums and Galleries of Scotland whereas the responsibility for the non-national museums, including industrial museums, lies with local agencies and those who set up and operate them.The Scottish Executive is providing £420,000 per annum over three years to support three industrial museums: the Scottish Maritime Museum, the Scottish Mining Museum and the Scottish Fisheries Museum.Matters affecting trading and staffing at industrial museums are the responsibility of the trusts which run the industrial museums.

The Scottish Executive continue to work very closely with local authorities to meet the guarantee of a one-year training contract for all eligible probationary teachers. Considerable progress has been made. Sufficient funding is being made available to meet this guarantee. This, along with other steps being taken will minimise the impact on teachers currently on temporary contracts.

Written consultation exercises undertaken by the Scottish Executive use a variety of document formats: letters, photocopied papers or published material. All of these documents are made available to the public via the Executive website, in addition to being distributed to targeted organisations and individuals. Consultation documents have been published on the Executive website since its inception. The following table provides details of how many consultation exercises involving written documents have been undertaken by the Scottish Executive each year.

Year	Number of Consultations
1999 (from 1 July)	92
2000	140
2001	164
2002 (up to March 2002)	45

There is no central information available on how many Scottish Executive consultations, each year, involved radio or other media advertising.

Decisions about the publication of consultation documents, strategic plans or policy papers are taken by the Executive on an on-going basis. Consultation papers are posted on the Scottish Executive website. Responses to consultation documents are logged and made available to the public at the Scottish Executive Library (Saughton House).

The National Debate on Education is being advertised on 13 commercial radio stations and 48 poster sites in key urban locations. Advice on the intensity, location and placement of media to ensure maximum participation in the debate was given by Executive officials, Faulds Advertising Agency and the Media Buyer Feather Brookes Bank. It is not the Executive's practice to disclose the terms of uncompleted contracts.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-24690 today. Of the activities quoted, work which was completed by the end of March 2002 cost £130,000. Costs for 2002-03 will also include sums for analysis of feedback and for events during the national debate. Figures for total expenditure will be available in the autumn.

Promotional activity for the National Debate on Education aims to maximise participation and generate a high level of feedback, which will be shared with the Education, Culture and Sport Committee. The costs are shown in the following table:

Activity	Cost (£)
(a) Design and production materials	45,000
(b) Radio and other media advertising	215,000*
(c) Display advertising	40,000
(d) Other promotional activities	60,000*
Total	360,000*

Note:*Costs for on-going activities are latest estimates of final totals.

Decisions about the size of spend for promoting and advertising consultation exercises are taken by the Executive on an on-going basis, with advice on advertising and marketing from the Scottish Executive's Media and Communications Group and the specialist agencies under contract to it. Criteria for the communications spend are based on the specific requirements of individual consultation exercises.

The Scottish Executive is providing £20 million under the Inclusion Programme in both 2002-03 and 2003-04. These resources are to facilitate the inclusion of children with special educational needs in mainstream schools and to bring the length of the school week in special schools into line with mainstream provision. In addition, the Executive is providing £7.8 million to education authorities in both 2002-03 and 2003-04 (up from £5.4 million in 2001-02) for the development and training of teachers and school support staff working in SEN. These funds can be used to enable teachers to attend a range of in-service and post-graduate training courses offering both general SEN training and training in specific aspects of SEN. The Executive is also funding an Inclusive Schools project, run by Aberdeen University and to be completed in autumn this year, which will provide schools with examples of good practice in inclusive schooling for children with special educational needs.

Information on the number of special educational needs units built is not held centrally. However, within the last three years, 18 special educational needs units were opened. These figures include an existing special unit previously falling within the budgetary control of a mainstream school, but which has now been re-classified as an autonomous unit. Also included are special schools which have been re-classified as special units. Information on the capacity of these units is not available.